blog

Funny thing about winter travel in the Northeast–you usually return to fresh snow. So of course I returned from last week’s conference to dig out my car and go snowshoeing.

One of the fun things about scientific conferences is that everyone talks about new, unpublished results. The flip side is that it’s difficult for a would-be-blogger to describe much without breaking confidentiality. Suffice to say that a good conference brings together a variety of interesting people with cool new science and this one succeeded.

Yet I think it’s safe to say that the biggest splash at the conference was a talk from Prof. Kyoung-Shin Choi, a young professor in the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University. Her research is on synthesizing a variety of nanoscale materials, including inorganic nanoparticles.

Her talk actually included some discussion on the formation of snowflakes, including pictures from one of the cooler science websites out there: Snowflakes and Snow Crystals (a.k.a. SnowCrystals.com). In snow, the growth of a flake reflects a balance between growth of ice crystal facets and branching.

Definitely one of the cooler chemistry/nanoscience talks I’ve attended recently–no pun intended. (Well, maybe a little.)