Organic Chemistry

The ladies met Dr. Jessica Tischler, an organic chemist at UM-Flint, and learned about how organic chemists make molecules used in every day products. They even learned about a special type of reaction called a Fischer esterification and how to predict what the products of two reactants will be with this type of reaction. They were really good at this and seemed to enjoy it much more than the college chemistry students! Once they predicted their products, they combined four sets of acids and alcohols to make their esters than have them think of a way to test to see whether they would likely make good flavorings. We truly got to experiment today to see whose combinations would make things that we liked the smell of as the instructors weren’t even sure about which combinations would work.