Blakely Dishman
Features Editor
First, can you introduce yourself?
Yep, I am Paul Edmiston and I use he/him pronouns. I am from the Department of Chemistry. My hometown is Tucson, Arizona.
Okay, can you describe what you teach? And what’s your favorite class to teach?
I teach general chemistry and analytical chemistry, which is how to make chemical measurements, and forensic science, which is the non-majors class I teach. You know, I don’t really have a favorite. I just love teaching. It’s sort of like one of those things like, which is your favorite child? Every class I have is wonderful. Forensic science is so much fun. And it’s really neat to see how chemistry intersects with society. General chemistry is the basics of chemistry, which is really neat. And in the upper level classes in analytical chemistry, I get to work with some of the most sophisticated instruments in the world, and it’s really fun. So they’re all great.
What are you passionate about?
Well, one thing I’m really passionate about is the work I’m doing, which is detecting environmental contaminants in water. I’ve been working on a class of compounds called PFA which are perfluorinated compounds. We’re seeing them in pretty much every water sample that we get, whether it’s a river in Ohio or California. It’s been really interesting to try to deduce where they’re coming from. It’s almost like environmental forensics.
Outside of work, what do you do in your free time?
Well, I spend time with my family. And I also really like to ride my bicycle. Yeah, Wayne County is a great place to ride. Like a road bike. There’s lots of roads. It’s beautiful countryside. And in the summer, it’s pretty, it’s pretty good. I like to ride my bicycle.
And let’s see, what are you involved with on campus?
So right now I’m involved with the pre-law program and the biochemistry molecular biology program. Those are the main things I’m doing right now. I have also been an APEX Fellow mentor and work with students who are interested in summer research.
And what’s your favorite, like, research project that you’ve supervised? Or is that an impossible ask?
I’ve done so many research projects. It’s been really neat. I’ve done lots of environmental chemistry projects that have measured molecules and various waters all over the world. And even done like a project where we built a robot that played the guitar to learn how the metal composition of guitar strings affects how guitars play sounds. So I mean, there’s been so many projects. I think what I like best is when there are projects that are collaborative and projects that students are just really passionate about. There’s been so many over the past 25 years I’ve worked here that is, so there’s really great.
And what’s your favorite part about working here?
Oh, Wooster students are really fantastic people. They’re super bright. But they’re also really good people. And they want the world to be a better place. It’s really great to work with them.
If you are a chemical, what chemical would you be? How is it made?
Vanilla extract, it smells so good. The vanilla that we typically put in our ice cream can come from two places. One, you can extract it from the vanilla plant, or you can synthesize it in a laboratory.
What’s a chemistry fact that everyone should know?
That’s a really good question. Okay, so in order to know whether something’s going to happen, So either something’s gonna happen or not happen in the world. The things that will tell you, whether it happens is the following…
We call it thermodynamics, whether it’s energetically possible. If it’s energetically possible, that’s one reason it can happen. The other reason is called the kinetics, how fast does it happen? So some things can happen, but they happen really slowly. So we have to know both can happen energetically, and how fast it will happen. And that’s what a lot of what we spend time figuring out as chemists. An example is that wood and air react together. Normally, we don’t see that happening, wood and air just sit there, but they’re actually still reacting, they just go really slow. But if you turn up the temperature, they go really fast. It’s called fire. So you have to know both the fact that it can happen, air and wood will react and then how fast it happens. If it goes really slow. What we get is like aged wood, it looks gray and brown. It’s like, oh, that’s an old piece of wood, once it’s just partially burned is what it is from the air.
So there’s two dichotomies. There’s rules to say the things that can happen. And then we have rules about how fast it happens. There are lots of things that happen, but just really slowly. And that’s why I love that chemistry because it then opens your eyes to how the world works. Why does a piece of wood look old? It’s just because it’s partially burned by the air around it.
My mind has been blown right now. What advice do you have for students?
It’s advice that we all probably hear, follow your passions. If you’re passionate about something, and you like the people you’re working with, you’re going to have a really good time and be very successful.