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How can new semiconductors revolutionize photovoltaics?
Will it be possible to one day roll flexible solar arrays off skyscrapers? Professor Alexi Arango has custom-built a solar cell fabrication lab at Mount Holyoke College attempt to answer this exciting question. Using alternative semi-conductors such as quantum dots, molecular dyes, and metal oxides, Arango and his team of students hope to increase solar cell efficiency and decrease overall cost of production. For greater insight into solar cell performance, students use thermal mapping and atomic force microscopy. An understanding of how electrons move from material to material helps students redesign devices.
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Predicting how climate change will affect the range of the fiddler crabStudents join Professor Renae Brodie on a hunt for ovigerous female fiddler crabs in Wareham, MA. Once a female carrying embryos is found, they will bring it back to the lab, wait for it to spawn, and carefully raise its embryos. When the larvae have metamorphosed into megalopa, the students conduct measurements of larval respiration rates at different salinities to determine how salinity stresses the larvae. It is likely that climate change will affect salinity in estuarine environments, and if it does, Brodie and her students will be able to predict how these changes will affect the fiddler crab's range. They may also be able to predict overall ecosystem effects because fiddler crabs are considered keystone species throughout much of their range.
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The Paleontology of ProblematicaIn this first-year seminar, students use MHC's unique fossil collection to answer questions about the origins of animals. Professor Mark McMenamin specializes in the paleontology of unexplained fossils and finds it a tremendous asset to work with students who have no geological preconceptions. By approaching these strange fossils with open minds, McMenamin and his students engage in heated debates about scientific concepts some might consider ironclad.
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