Media Release
Mangalore, Sep 12: St Aloysius College, department of Chemistry will be organizing a workshop on Mathematics in Chemistry an interdisciplinary approach and micro scale chemistry in Chemical Laboratories on Thursday, September 13, this has been sponsored by the department of Biotechnology, Government of India under the star college scheme.
The department of Biotechnology; Government of India has selected the St Aloysius College for the financial assistance under ‘star college scheme’. Under this scheme, the science departments make sincere efforts to popularize the basic science courses and mould young minds to focus their attention on choosing a career of studies and research in basic Science.
There is a need for an interdisciplinary approach such as Mathematics in Chemistry. Compartmentalization of subjects was mainly responsible for the reduction in the relevance of UG courses in basic sciences which has resulted in the dwindling of admissions and less preference for basic sciences, said the organizers.
By giving importance to interdisciplinary approach, students will be given a wider framework to understand the contribution and relevance of basic sciences to the changing environmental needs.
This session on mathematics in chemistry, an interdisciplinary approach, is a sincere attempt to bridge the gap between mathematics and chemistry, which gives a holistic approach to science education and will make basic sciences more pragmatic and appealing to the present generation students and teachers.
Dr Richard Gonsalves, head of PG Analytical Chemistry, said that “Micro scale Chemistry is an analytical and a teaching method widely used in chemical laboratories, working with small quantities of chemical substances. Worldwide, micro scale movement has created interests among chemists.”
He also said that, the modern concept is to convert existing experiments to micro scale and save on chemicals. This will save costs, it will be safer for the students and will cause lesser waste. Moreover, processes will take place much faster so that even the slower organic syntheses will become available as student experiments. Demonstration experiments can become student lab experiments without increasing the amount of chemicals used, he added.
The present workshop aims at popularizing the techniques used in micro scale Chemistry by the exposing the staff and students of Chemistry to a fund of knowledge, directed by experts in the field.
Deepa Vasanth the convener of the progamme informed syaing, “This is an attempt from the organizers to reduce the use of harmful chemicals in analysis also that we can move on from the present semi micro analysis to a newer Micro scale analysis and thus develop a greener approach in laboratories”.