Science department studies with high tech equipment

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Matthew Young holds up a jar of what appears to be wine.
"This," he says, "has gold nanoparticles in it."
Nanoparticles are tiny, tiny objects. A nanometer is a unit on the metric scale equal to one billionth of a meter. When metal particles are reduced in size on the nanoscale, Young said, they take on different properties. Gold, for example, takes on the color red.
Junior Paul Schmitt participated in a physical chemistry lab last semester. On the nanoscale, he and his classmates tried to transform spherical nanometals into triangular prisms when introduced to light. It didn't work, but this summer Schmitt is assisting Young on a research project focused on antibiotic molecules.
Young said in some instances antibiotics pass through an animal without being consumed. If the antibiotic is released in soil and reaches a water supply, bacteria can build immunity to antibiotics, causing sickness, he said. To understand how the antibiotics move, the project uses two instruments: the Atomic Force Microscope and the Raman Spectrometer.
Schmitt will use the Raman Spectrometer this summer. The instrument measures the movement of molecules using a laser. It's hidden in a corner of Strosacker and doesn't look a thing like a laser should. Instead, it looks like a big black box with black stands scattering a table. That box is only a small part of a larger mechanism. The actual laser is housed in a small, cigarette-like container. It's 15 times more powerful than a pen laser.
"It can do some real damage," senior Sean Holmes said.
Schmitt will be using the spectrometer this summer when he begins researching antibiotics. Holmes said the machine's laser projects a fine green light. That light goes through various lenses until a very specific wavelength is left. The wavelength is shone onto a sample in a liquid solution, Holmes said, when it hits a molecule the light will give off a different, but faint, wavelength. The large detector then picks the wavelength up and analyzes it.
Holmes said the sample could be washed with water and re-measured to detect any movement.
Before the Spectrometer comes the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), which is used to analyze the surface the antibiotic will be placed on. Young said they'll use a material called mineral oxide to simulate soil. Schmitt said this limits the variables in the sample.
The AFM is shared by the physics and chemistry departments. It is capable of measuring an atom, but it's not being used to measure atoms currently. Assistant Professor of Physics Cyrill Slezak said that while the college's AFM is capable, it must be set up in unique mechanism using bungee cords, pointing to a black bucket in the corner. But even then there's no guarantee that it will work — someone walking down the hall could cause enough vibration to miss a measurement.
"Most of the time you're looking at large structures," Slezak said.
By large, he means about 100 nanometers, the size of a transistor on a computer chip, small enough that optical microscopes won't work. The AFM's actual scanning mechanism protrudes from a cantilever and is so small that it can't be seen using an optical microscope. It's only a few atoms wide.
To scan, light is shone on the back of the cantilever as a metal disk carrying the sample is moved underneath it. As the cantilever moves with the sample's topography, so does the light, which is picked up, constructing an image.
Schmitt said if everything goes well this summer, he'll complete his senior thesis before the next school year begins.
"I'm always pleasantly surprised at the level of capabilities here. You'd be hard pressed to find another school our size with a similar level of instrumentation," Schmitt said.