Day 8 -- Bioproducts

Tuesday was a complete change relative to the previous 7 days.  We spent the entire day looking at the business of biologically derived materials and their incorporation into salable products.  The day began by looking at a commonly forgotten segment of the bioproduct industry, medicine.  Dr. Donna Gibson. Dr. Gibson is an adjunct professor of plant pathology at Cornell and has done a lot of work on the development of synthetically derived taxol from the yew tree.

Later in the morning we heard from a participant of last year's program and fellow buckeye, Andrea Harpen, a physics and chemistry teacher from Blanchester High School in south eastern Ohio.  She spoke about leveraging Ohio's strengths in agriculture to create more bioproducts and jobs in Ohio.  More on her work later.

In the afternoon we participated in a series of lab activities that utilized materials that were 100% biologically derived and consequently qualify them as bioproducts.  Specifically we compared the stain-fighting properties of a soy-based carpet cleaner to a petroleum-based cleaner.  We also designed an experiment to compare the lubricity of a soy-based lubricant versus a petroleum based lubricant.  Lastly we used corn-starch and a variety of other ingredients to make our own biologically derived packing peanuts.  The beauty of these activities was that the procedure and methodology for comparing the product's abilities was left to us.

Comparison of a soy-based carpet cleaner (Green Carpet) vs. petroleum-based carpet cleaner (Spot Shot)

Making corn starch based packing peanuts using various different inputs (water, baking powder, glycerine, grass)