Special Seminars for High School Students 2018

On October 28, 2018, a special seminar was held for high school students in Kumamoto Prefecture.

Led by Kumamoto Prefectural Daini High School designated as a Super Science High School (SSH), the seminar was held at the SOJO International Learning Center (SILC) and then in the building of the Department of Nanoscience, with the cooperation of Kumamoto Prefectural Senior High School Science Teachers’ Association under the support of Kumamoto Prefectural Board of Education and Sojo University.
The invited speakers were Dr. Kohei Tamao, the President of Toyota Physical and Chemical Research Institute and Dr. Hisao Eguchi from Tosoh Corporation. Dr. Tamao spoke about the chemistry around us, familiarizing us more with organic chemistry. The students were surprised at the wide range of applications of the cross-coupling reaction, invented by Dr. Tamao and his co-workers, after learning that Dr. Eguchi uses that reaction in his development and manufacture of industrial materials.

In the afternoon session, the students moved to the building of the Department of Nanoscience, where they experienced the synthesis of fluorescein, which is a fluorescent dye. They used a simple method to synthesize fluorescein, and successfully identified the substance with thin-layer chromatography (TLC).