Waterloo's Dean Lemieux of Science paid a visit to the wildly successful MNS Society Liquid Crystal Synthesis lab where students created Liquid Crystal temperature and pressure sensors. The Dean's research is in designing advanced liquid crystal materials found in high-performance microdisplays.
He joined into a safety and physics pre-lab talk by MNS President, Seneca Velling, about the structural colour and historical origins of liquid crystals.
"These cholesterol derivatives were among the first liquid crystals discovered by the Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer back in 1888."
The type of crystals the dean discussed were the cholesteric liquid crystals, which are a macroscopic helical assembly of chiral nematic liquid crystals that rotate plane polarized light into the beautiful colours observed. These liquid crystals are temperature and pressure sensitive.
In total nearly 40 people attended over the course of the 2 hours the lab was run, including 2+2/2+1+1 students from Waterloo's partnership programs with Beijing. The Society was thrilled to have excellent student engagement in yet another highly successful lab event, and thanked the Dean for his participation in a field of research very dear to him.
The Dean also took time to meet with student government representatives who attended the Society's lab event from Biology (BUGS President Fatimah Roble), Biochemistry (BSA President Natalie Boccalon), Chemistry (ChemClub President David Symons), Materials & Nanosciences (VP Austin Richard), and a FEDS Councilor (Seneca Velling). The Dean reinforced the value of events like this to teach complex and beautiful science in a concise and simple manner.
