On November 7th, I attended a seminar presented by Dr. Pennington. He is a researcher and professor at Clemson University, and came to discus his research on halogen bonding. Halogen bonding is topic that has been around for a quite some time, however, it did not receive an actual name until the 90’s. He discussed how the term halogen bonding has to be limited to those interactions wherein halogens function as acceptors of electron density. X is a halogen (Lewis Base) D is any electron donor and Y is a carbon, halogen, nitrogen, etc. The halogen specifically acts as an electrophilic molecule, which means it is very electronegative and likes being that way. For the X's he used examples such as Flourine, Chlorine, Bromine, and Iodine.
Dr. Pennington also discussed crystal chemistry. Crystal chemistry has a lot of involvement of Lewis acid and Lewis base interactions.He went on to discuss a student who became a renowned chrystallographer under his teachings and direction. Another interest that Dr. Pennington spoke about was the structural description of amorphous material, multi-crystals, and single-crystals designs through a technique called scattering. For an example of this, he used a sheet of paper that had the Clemson school symbol on it, and displayed how it could chance from orange to blue and vice versa. I thought this to be a very interesting seminar, and although I did not fully understand the concept, it is something that I would not mind doing further research.
Reference: http://www.clemson.edu/ces/departments/chemistry/people/faculty/pennington.html
It's good to know that halogens are more important than elimination and substitution. Haha. Was the Clemson paper test the one that determines whether you're color blind or not? I'll have to look that one up. I appreciated that your summary is short and sweet. Great job! What about this seminar do you think interests you so much? The lecture I went to was beyond overwhelming. I'm glad you liked your seminar enough to want to go into it more.
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