MICROHETEROTOPIAS: CHEMISTRY MEETS GLASSBLOWING

Thursday, March 30, 5:30 p.m.

West Building Lecture Hall 

Desperate to solve chemistry's greatest problem, Justus Liebig made the first Kaliapparat in 1830. That small piece of glassware started something big. The Kaliapparat made Liebig's name, but lampworked glassware transformed chemistry. 
Chemists use other worlds in glass - the Microheterotopias of our title - to manage matter. Making Microheterotopias relies on skilled scientific glassblowers. This talk explains what happened when chemistry met glassblowing -and why that link remains vital today. 

Catherine M. Jackson (Associate Professor of the History of Science, University of Oxford) will be joined by Master Scientific Glassblower Tracy Drier of the UW-Madison Chemistry Department. Together they will present a recreation of discovery through the manipulation of glass in fire.