Right around the time prospectors and miners arrived in Telluride in the 1870s, eventually dynamiting and pick-axing their way through the San Juans, the Periodic Table was developed in Europe.

“The Periodic Table is one of the crowning achievements of mankind’s hard work to understand the world we live in,” says John Straub, Professor of Chemistry at Boston University, who will be speaking at this Tuesday’s Pinhead Town Talk Extravaganza beginning at 7:00 pm at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village.

Carefully shipping and hand-carrying various chemical compounds from the East Coast and West, Straub promises to bring the Periodic Table to life with (manageable) explosions, fire, and drama in his talk entitled, “A Lively Tour of the Periodic Table.”

“I would like the audience to share my sense of wonder and excitement about the information that is captured in the Periodic Table, and leave with a feeling that they might like to spend some time learning more about it – perhaps through their own chemical experiments,” he says with a smile.

The ability to bring life to chemistry is rare. Straub is a renowned, award-winning professor who focuses on teaching undergraduates at all levels and guiding doctoral students in research, as well as a practicing scientist himself. “John’s lecturing style embodies a contagious enthusiasm that reinforces the clarity with which he presents ideas,” says one of his students. Upon receiving Boston University’s 2005 Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, the administration wrote, “His gift is the ability to simplify complex scientific principles for students at any level and to tap their enthusiasm for learning. An innovative educator, Straub has helped shape the general chemistry curriculum at Boston University.” He was also the 2003 recipient of the Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences.

“Through short stories and chemical demonstrations, we will have a chance to explore the special properties of a few elements, some of which are particularly special to the past and present of the town of Telluride,” says Straub who first came to Telluride in 1994 with his family for a Telluride Science Research Center (TSRC) workshop. “Most of all, at the Town Talk, I can promise smoke and fire and magical transformations that have captured the imagination of men and women for over a thousand years.”

Straub suggests that understanding the Periodic Table is essential to understanding everything in the universe: “The mysteries of chemistry, geology, biology - even psychology - must all be solved, at the most fundamental level, in terms of the interactions of atoms and molecules built from those elements. The Periodic Table describes and organizes, in a very special way, the hundred or so chemical elements that are the building blocks from which everything around us is made.” The Periodic Table is a monumental and highly efficient resource for scientists, part of a large tool kit they regularly rely upon to better understand the world we live in.

Another essential, powerful, scientific resource for a wide range of fields, including physics, chemistry, biology and medicine, is the laser. It first hit the scene as a functioning tool in 1960 and is now embedded in the daily lives of millions of people through communication systems, bar code scanners, cd/dvd players, laser printers and pointers. Other applications include cancer detection, laser eye surgery, laser removal of wrinkles, hair, tattoos, and veins. But the importance of lasers as fundamental scientific research tools, beyond the technological applications, cannot be understated. Scientists see the world differently now, because of insights gained by probing the microscopic world with lasers. Five Nobel Prizes have been awarded to scientists advancing laser technology and science.

Carl Lineberger, E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of Colorado and Fellow of JILA will give the second talk of the Extravaganza entitled, “Lasers: The Light Fantastic.” He promises to elucidate why lasers are so cool.

Light from a laser is fundamentally different from other light. Laser light is composed of waves exclusively and is intense, highly focused, and made up of one color only, although that color may be changed under different circumstances and for different purposes. Other light, such as sunlight, is diffuse and composed of particles called photons. Thus they behave very differently.

Lineberger wants to help the audience “appreciate the difference between laser and other light sources, to see some of the unique things that can be done with lasers, and to remove some of the mystery of how they really work.” He first came to Telluride as part of the TSRC back in its earliest days in 1975 with Steve Berry, one of the founders along with Peter Solomon, and has been coming back since to do science in Telluride. It is fitting then that Lineberger will be giving his talk as the 3rd Annual Telluride Science Research Center “R. Stephen Berry Lecture.”

Linberger has published over 225 papers in major scientific journals, and his graduate students and postdoctoral associates now hold major research-related positions throughout the world. Lineberger has been awarded numerous awards, including the H. P. Broida Prize in Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy, the Earle K. Plyler Prize by the American Physical Society, the Meggers Prize by the Optical Society of America, the Michelson Prize by the Coblentz Society, the Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics and the Peter Debye Prize in Physical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a member of Sigma Xi and the American Chemical Society.

He is involved in a number of science advisory activities. Currently, he currently serves on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences and the Governing Board of the National Research Council. He is a member of the National Research Council Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy, and is the Chair of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

In short, TSRC and Pinhead Institute proudly invite the town, including children and visitors this Tuesday, August 2, 7:00 – 9:00 pm, to the second annual summer Pinhead Town Talk Extravaganza program with a presentation and demonstration called “A Lively Tour of the Periodic Table” given by Straub, followed by questions taken from the audience; and “Lasers: The Light Fantastic,” by Lineberger, again followed by Q & A. Presiding over the evening’s explosions and discussions will be Howard Donner, M.D., a wilderness medicine expert, filmmaker, and pilot. Doors open at 6:00 pm to the lobby of the Conference Center, where there will be a cash bar.

While the origin of our town’s name remains a mystery – from mineral or the standard to-hell-you-ride journeys within and upon the San Juans – in the miner’s search of silver (Ag 47) and gold (Au 79), it should be noted, they sometimes found Tellurium (Te 52).

For more information contact Pinhead Institute at 970-728-0713 or visit www.pinheadinstitute.org.

Second Annual Summer
Pinhead Town Talk Extravaganza
July 29, 2005
For more information contact Nana Naisbitt