Emma Corcoran creates article for Chemists Celebrate Earth Week

Senior chemistry major, Emma Corcoran, wrote an article that was published as one of the feature articles in the American Chemical Society's Celebrating Chemistry, a publication for intermediate and middle school students in grades 4th-6th for "Chemists Celebrate Earth Week." Working with Professor Jane Wissinger, a leading expert in the design of green chemistry experiments and curriculum, Emma's article focuses on earth-friendly plastics, and leads students through the creation of edible water pods to replace the use of plastic water bottles.

For her senior honors thesis, Emma worked with Wissinger to create a full curriculum around this experiment for middle and high school students. The curriculum was based on the edible water pods outreach activity from Beyond Benign, an organization that makes green chemistry curriculum for K-12 and college classrooms. The full curriculum included lesson plans and worksheets for middle and high-school classrooms. In the lessons, students were guided through making batches of edible water pods made from sodium alginate and calcium lactate, and then designed an inquiry of their own about the pods. Both the middle- and high-school lesson plans hit state/national science standards as well as introduce green chemistry. Last fall, the high school curriculum was piloted at White Bear Lake High School. Emma and Professor Wissinger also worked on a Journal of Chemical Education article about the lessons. 

Emma graduated in spring 2020. Emma was an outstanding chemistry major and hopes to become a chemistry teacher. She was also a coordinator working with the Energy and U program.