Matt Jackson Presents at Junior High Career Fair

Dr. Matt Jackson, a post-doc in the Soper research group at KU, participated in a career fair for middle school students at Baldwin Junior High School in Baldwin City, Kansas on January 16, 2019. Matt presented career opportunities and pathways in chemistry, spanning government, academia, and throughout the chemical industries, to six classes of 7th and 8th grade students.

Matt focused on expanding the students’ views of chemistry, beyond just beakers and chemicals and towards biomedical applications, environmental science, green energies, and alternative careers in scientific writing, policy, and law.

Matt began engaging the students in chemistry by playing an episode of The Muppets, where Bunsen struggled with a fire from Dr. Bunsen’s unsuccessful invention, flameproof paper. The photo shown is of Matt lighting a dollar bill, soaked in a water/isopropanol mixture, on fire. He then explained why the inflamed fabric was protected by water and was not burned.