For students who would like a sneak-peak into the world of science and scientific thinking.
Coming in 2022
CHEM1777
Chemistry of Cosmetics and Personal Care Products
This course will explain how cosmetics and personal care products work from a scientific standpoint. Chemistry plays a key role in the manufacturing and continual improvement of personal care and other household products. It is involved in all stages, from chemical extraction of natural products to the packaging of final consumer products. Throughout the course, students will learn the interaction of skin-care chemicals with lipids in the skin, the suspension of oil in emulsions, how foundation products scatter light to hide skin blemishes, and how sunscreens filter or scatter UV light. Furthermore, the students will learn how to interpret ingredient lists and understand their role.聽
Marketing hype and trends, such as anti-aging, will be dissected to examine the underlying scientific principles and negative campaigns analysed to evaluate their veracity. Additionally, we intend the course to have a practical component, where students will learn to make their own cosmetics and household products (soaps and sanitisers) in a chemistry laboratory and understand some of the techniques used in the personal care products industry to assess products prior to taking them to market.聽
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CHEM2701
Chemical Origins of Life
Scientific understanding of the origin of life is undergoing rapid evolution, involving collaborations amongst many scientific disciplines wherein chemistry plays the central role. This course is designed for non-Chemistry majors who want to learn some broadly relevant chemistry beyond First Year. It is also an allowed elective for Chemistry majors.
The course will examine how important biomolecules central to life as we know it, like sugars, amino acids, nucleotides and polymers thereof, could have been synthesised abiotically and come together to form the first primitive cells. Topics will include: 1) synthesis and observation of molecules in astrochemical and terrestrial environments, 2) discovering the role of important biomolecules like, DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids, and 3) understanding scientific progress towards making synthetic protocells in the lab. Students will learn valuable concepts across a variety of chemistry-related subjects in service of gaining an understanding of the current scientific consensuses regarding the chemistry critical to life's origins and what questions remain unanswered.