Singing scientists in new YouTube video
That’s why I chose chemical engineering? A video about the history of chemical engineering at Yale and the department was posted to YouTube Nov. 28.
The video, called “A Reactor for Your Future” was a project for Principles of Chemical Engineering and Process Modeling, a class taught by professor Andre Taylor, and the objective was to make an promotional video for Chemical Engineering at Yale, wrote Greta Stetson ’12, who stars in the video, in an e-mail. (Stetson is also a staff reporter for the News.) The film features a prospective engineering student (Stetson) encountering various illustrious scientists who made contributions to chemical engineering at Yale and singing along with them to a folky, indie song.
She meets Josiah Willard Gibbs by his grave at the Grove Street Cemetery who sings that he was the recipient of the first engineering doctorate in the nation. Next she encounters Benjamin Silliman, the first person to distill petroleum, in the residential college courtyard bearing his namesake. The last scientist the student encounters is Csaba Horváth, the renowned chemical engineer significant for building the first high performance liquid chromatograph.
The video features a peppy dance and even some useful information for those of us not interested in chemical engineering – how many non-Sillimanders actually know who Silliman was?
Stetson wrote there are more videos to come.