IN THE NEWS: PROFILES
THE MAGIC OF CHEMISTRY
It may be amazing, but it's not really magic...
by Suki Casanave
Last fall, Chuck Zercher made his debut as an orange crayon. Fashioned from construction paper, complete with carefully lettered "Crayola crayon" logo and pointed orange hat, Zercher's creation was the perfect outfit for presiding over the Halloween Chemistry Magic Show, which drew more than 500 people from the local community.
"Return of the Bubble Man," "Vanishing Styrofoam," "Mysterious Magic Writing"--the audience was treated to a whole slew of tricks. And they learned a little science, too. The assistant professor himself wowed the audience with "Cryogenic Fire." A block of dry ice sliced in half, then reassembled with a bit of magnesium lodged in the center was all it took. Turn down the lights, strike a match to the magnesium, and--voila! Fueled by oxygen from the CO2, the magnesium glowed eerie and white, sending smoky billows curling through the room.
Long before he became known for working magic as "the orange crayon guy," Zercher had a reputation with students. Just ask Vasillii Petrenko. The junior biophysics major was prepared for the worst. Organic chemistry, he'd been warned, would be the dullest, most aggravating science course he'd taken--dozens and dozens of reactions, hundreds of compounds, straight memorization.
"What I got instead," says Petrenko, "was one of the most inspiring courses I've ever taken with the best professor I've ever had. We didn't just memorize. We learned processes and principles."
It may seem like magic to his students, but to Zercher this approach to the dreaded course is entirely logical. "Many think organic chemistry is just an accumulation of details, but it makes sense," he insists. Zercher himself didnıt make this discovery until graduate school. Now, he shares it with undergraduates the first day of class. His syllabus begins with these words: "Organic chemistry is relentlessly cumulative."
This idea helps sustain students during their weeks as chemical detectives in Zercher's qualitative organic analysis lab. Their mission: to identify a half dozen unknown compounds by running a series of tests, both old and new. "I tell them we're going to live in two worlds," says Zercher, "the world of empirical chemistry as performed in the 1920s and the world of newer spectroscopic techniques developed in recent years."
Their progress is remarkable. At the start of the semester, the identification process might take three or four weeks. "By the end of the semester, if I gave them an unknown at one o'clock in the afternoon, most students could figure it out by five. It's really exciting to see their development."
Zercher says his teaching has been inspired by his mother, a home economics teacher. He also inherited from her a recipe for coconut-pumpkin pie that won him first place in the chemistry department's pie-baking contest. And, like Mom, he dishes out good advice, right along with his knowledge of scientific methods. One of his well-known maxims: "You can learn as much from something that didn't work, as from something that did work."
Having worked patiently for years in his own lab, Zercher speaks from experience. "Iım interested in discovering how to get from point A to point B,² he says, describing the idea behind synthetic organic chemstry, which involves the study of methods for preparing, as well as for actually generating, organic (carbon-based) compounds.²
His own research focuses on two compounds with names that sound like lock combinations, but which he reels off as if he were talking about two of his students. FR-900848 and U-106305 are polycyclopropanes--rings of three carbon molecues, linked end to end in a string of four or five. Remarkable for their structural motif, the compounds astounded Zercher when he first read about their isolation from bacteria in 1990. "No naturally occuring compound with this structure had ever been reported before," he says.
"Our challenge,² says Zercher, whose work has drawn national attention, ³is to develop strategies to prepare and control these structures, so that eventually the relationship between structure and biological activity can be elucidated." This effort to explain and understand polycyclopropanes provides a basis for biological applications--including use by the agricultural industry as an antifungal agent for the treatment of molds.
In the midst of pursuing his research, Zercher remains passionate about teaching. Indeed, the chance to devote himself to both activities is precisely what attracted him to UNH in the first place."I wanted to be part of that balance, that commitment to teaching and research," says Zercher. Plus, he gets to perform magic.
PHOTO CAPTION
Working Magic: Chuck Zercher's students think he works magic in the classroom. He also bakes prize-winning pies, orchestrates the annual Halloween Chemistry Magic show, and pursues research on two new compounds that has attracted national attention.