Erin Whitney '96 Anne Normand '95 Research interests Link to our summer research results from 1998. Besides nitrogen and oxygen, the atmosphere contains many, many other molecules in trace amounts. The various reactions that can take place between these gases are certainly complex when taken as a whole. However, in the laboratory it is often possible to study the individual interactions between just one, two, or three different trace-gas species. We are currently studying the interaction of sulfur dioxide with soot particles.
Different soots come from burning different fuels.
One of the places where these questions are important is in the exhaust plumes of jet aircraft. We want to know how easily sulfur dioxide is oxidized on the soot surface. Sulfur dioxide oxidation in turn leads to sulfuric acid droplets which can then nucleate cloud droplets forming the contrails we see in the sky. The sulfuric acid droplets also have implications for global warming and for ozone depletion.