Aaron Strickland: I was getting a reaction at one end of a molecule that I didn’t necessarily expect.

Welcome to EarthSky’s Chronicles of a Science Experiment, Episode 4. This season we’re following Aaron Strickland, a postdoctoral chemist at Cornell University. His research project is in nanotechnology, the science of the very small.

Aaron’s been having problems, as a synthetic organic chemist, making the thing he wants. It’s a simple organic chemical that will bind together a metal surface and the s-layer, or surface layer of the bacteria E-coli. But, after months in the lab, he’s finally done it. And knowing just where he went wrong made all the difference.

Our thanks to Aaron Strickland, National Science Foundation Discovery Corps Fellow and Cornell University chemist. Carl Batt of Cornell created the concept for this program.

Made possible by the National Science Foundation