The Good, the Bad, and the Chemistry: Decoding Chemical Sensationalism

An illustrated Weeknights at the Wagner lecture:

The Good, the Bad, and the Chemistry: Decoding Chemical Sensationalism
by Dr. Michelle Francl, Bryn Mawr College

Museum open until the talk begins at 6pm.

Is there really coal tar in macaroni and cheese? Should you eat things that you can’t pronounce? If a chemical is used to make yoga mats, is it safe to consume? Questions like these come up because there is a lot of information—and misinformation—about chemicals online and in the media. Chemists have a leg up on the rest of us when it comes to answering these questions. They see molecules in everything from coffee to blood to cheesy sauce, and they understand the way atoms and compounds work, including what makes some beautiful and others dangerous. At this Weeknights at the Wagner lecture, chemist Dr. Michelle Francl will decode the mysteries about chemicals and provide strategies that non-chemists can use to determine whether mainstream recommendations about chemicals are scientifically sound or purely sensationalism.

About the speaker: Michelle M. Francl is a Professor of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College and an Adjunct Scholar at the Vatican Observatory. Professor Francl earned both her B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. A quantum chemist, she has published in areas ranging from the development of methods for computational chemistry to the structures of topologically intriguing molecules. Her essays on science, culture and policy have appeared in Nature Chemistry, at Slate magazine, and in several published collections. She was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2009.

Image: Griffin, John Joseph. Chemical Recreations. Glasgow: R. Griffin & Co., 1834. From the Wagner Free Institute of Science library.