communicating the breadth & depth of chemistry’s impact on humankind

This film series shows the vital role the chemical sciences play in the biggest issues facing the world. Each film is accompanied by a lesson plan to integrate the science behind these innovations into the classroom.

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See Our Newest Film:

Untapped Potential

with Meagan Mauter, Stanford University; David Sedlak, UC Berkeley; and William Tarpeh, Stanford University

Ensuring a safe water supply is one of the most compelling challenges humanity faces in the 21st century. The nine-minute film “Untapped Potential” highlights the game-changing solutions being developed in the chemical sciences.

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Other Films in the Series:

Rewriting Life

with David Liu, Harvard University

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and the subsequent research-based innovations stemming from its discovery, integrate chemistry and evolution to program and re-program biology. David Liu’s lab has taken the basics of CRISPR and innovated the technology from cutting DNA to actually chemically swapping its component base pairs.

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Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

with Christopher Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology

Global climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time, and chemists and chemical engineers are at the forefront of this effort. One especially promising technology is Direct Air Capture.

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Under The Skin

with Zhenan Bao, Stanford University

Stanford chemical engineers have created a synthetic skin that can stretch like rubber, carry electricity, and self-heal. Working with chemical bonds, Zhenan Bao’s lab has chemically developed an entirely new class of synthetic polymers in order to create a highly functional replication of human skin.

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Chemistry Shorts is created and sponsored by the
Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation

Funded in part by the
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Supported by the
Research Corporation for Science Advancement

Endorsed by

The organizations listed above encourage teachers to use these films in their classrooms to inspire future generations of chemical scientists.

Other Points of Interest

Forgotten Genius (the story of pioneering chemist Percy Julian)

Jonte Lee (kitchen chemistry lessons)

Dreyfus Foundation on YouTube (Teacher-Scholar profiles & Dreyfus symposia)

The Poison Squad (chemistry’s role in food safety)

A Crash Course in Organic Chemistry (by Jakob Magolan)

CRISPR-Cas9 Mechanism & Applications (interactive lesson & videos)

Human Nature (CRISPR-Cas9 documentary)

The Artificial Leaf (artificial photosynthesis)

Untapped Potential

"Untapped Potential" features environmental and chemical engineering experts who explore how modern chemistry, desalination, and advanced oxidation processes can be used to quell the growing problem of diminishing fresh water sources. Featured specialists include David L. Sedlak, PhD, Professor, University of California Berkeley, Meagan Mauter, PhD, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and William Tarpeh, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University.

"We are experiencing lots of change in our water supply. Our traditional sources are not only less available to us, but we’re demanding more and more of them. As the climate changes, we’re seeing longer periods of drought; and as it gets warmer, more water evaporates. Scarcity is one of our huge problems in the 21st century. We’ve got to look for new water sources – sources like brackish water, municipal wastewater, industrial wastewater – and figure out ways to treat that water to a quality that enables its reuse. When it comes to turning water that’s undrinkable into something that we can put in people’s taps…it's chemistry. That’s the key to solving our problems." –– from “Untapped Potential," fourth in the film series Chemistry Shorts.

Learn more about Professor David L. Sedlak’s research at Sedlak Research Group.

Learn more about Professor Meagan Mauter’s research at WE3 Lab.

Learn more about Professor William Tarpeh’s research at Tarpeh Lab.

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Rewriting Life

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and the subsequent research-based innovations stemming from its discovery, integrate chemistry and evolution to program and re-program biology. David Liu at the Broad Institute has taken the basics of CRISPR and innovated the technology from cutting DNA to actually chemically swapping its component base pairs (Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine, and Thymine).

“The majority of human genetic diseases, which collectively affect hundreds of millions of people, are caused by single-letter (‘base’) changes on DNA. These single-letter swaps or ‘point mutations’ cause grievous diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, progeria, or muscular dystrophy. For many such diseases, correcting the DNA base from the pathogenic form back to the normal form is thought to offer a potential treatment or even a permanent cure. Towards this goal, our lab created molecular machines known as ‘base editors’ that directly correct point mutations in living cells and organisms.

“Through a combination of protein engineering and protein evolution, we developed two classes of base editors that together enable four kinds of base-to-base conversions at target positions in genomic DNA with high efficiency and few unwanted byproducts. The mutations that these base editors can correct collectively account for most known human pathogenic point mutations. Base editing has been used by many laboratories around the world in a wide range of organisms including bacteria, fungi, plants, fish, mammals, and even human embryos. We and others have integrated several of these developments to treat animal models of human genetic disease.

“This short film overviews the history of base editing and introduces the concepts behind the technology to a general audience.” – Liu lab

Learn more at Liu Group

Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Direct Air Capture makes use of amines, which capture carbon dioxide out of the air through specific chemical bonding. The carbon dioxide is then sequestered by storing it underground so that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is reduced every year. Though repurposing is helpful, it is not a solution. Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide every year through sequestration is the only real remedy.

Chemists and chemical engineers are working to scale up this technology to remove 10s of gigatons of carbon dioxide. Key challenges that lay ahead are to find ways to both reduce the cost of this procedure and make it more efficient.

In this film, experts from academia and industry discuss the science of Direct Air Capture and the opportunities it provides.

Additional Resources:

Christopher Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology Climeworks Carbon Engineering The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager Can Carbon Dioxide Removal Save the World? by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, November 13, 2017 One Man's Two-Decade Quest to Suck Greenhouse Gas Out of the Sky, by James Temple, MIT Technology Review, February 27, 2019 Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration, The National Academies Press (2019)

Under the Skin

Stanford chemical engineers have created a synthetic skin that can stretch like rubber, carry electricity, and self-heal. They have chemically developed an entirely new class of synthetic polymers in order to create a highly functional replication of human skin.

“Our skin is constantly helping us interact with the world. How do we know how tightly to hold objects so that they do not slip out of our hands; or whether a surface is too hot to touch; or even how to enjoy our comfortable pajamas? Our skin helps us determine sensations such as temperature, texture, vibration, and pressure. Also, it is constantly regenerating, protecting our internal organs from the outside environment, and automatically healing wounds. Besides helping us perform necessary tasks every day, skin provides us feedback that enriches our lives.

“We use our skin as an inspiration to make new types of electronics that are ultrathin, stretchable, healable, and biodegradable, and yet have electronic properties. Our goal is to change how we interact with electronics to ultimately improve human health. For example, we are developing seamless health monitoring electronics that provide real-time information on our vitals that guide disease diagnosis and ultimately serve as individualized treatment for the patient. Moreover, these electronics are critical for imparting the sense of touch in prosthetics and improving the quality of advanced robotics. By making these electronics biodegradable, not only are we consciously minimizing impact on the environment, we can begin to explore new applications of temporary electronics inside the body and in the environment (e.g. agriculture, forestry).

“In order to achieve these goals, we must use chemistry to create new materials. We focus on making polymers, otherwise known as plastics, electronically conducting and functional like skin. Understanding the molecular design rules are important for generating a material that has multiple properties that aren’t typically found together. We construct polymers with both covalent and dynamic bonds as well as encode instructions for self-assembly into desired architectures. There is a large chemical and physical landscape to design new polymeric materials for new types of electronics. We are exploring this exciting field and anticipate our findings will contribute to future advanced electronics.” – Bao lab

Learn more at Bao Research Group

communicating the breadth & depth of chemistry’s impact on humankind

Untapped Potential

Rewriting Life

Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Under The Skin

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Untapped Potential

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Rewriting Life

Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Additional Resources:

Under the Skin