Bryn Mawr College - Bryn Mawr Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

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n n n n b u u t ti KJ K THE new science building is full of surprises. Its steel-framed windows were borrowed from prison models, ostensibly not to keep people in lab but to allow for better light and ventilation. The ice-box in the advanced organic chemistry laboratory is supposedly for strictly scientific purposes but the larder, stocked with marmalade, peanut butter and ginger Wafers, in the geology study room down the hall makes no such pretenses. Mr. Cope found still another surprise when his colleagues decided to test the door in the fluorescent room. When the door was closed behind him, it was discovered that the knob was defective. Mr. Watson admits that while Mr. Cope lay gasping on the floor (the room is almost air-tight), his associates stood outside and jeered, waiting half an hour before they had the hinges removed. We wouldn ' t do it differently if we had to build the whole thing over again, declared Mr. Crenshaw. Ten years of careful consideration have gone into the planning of the building. There were to be four wings for the four sciences, with physics and chemistry across the road from Dalton. The houses already there were to be moved down the hill, but after they had been theoretically slid all the way to the infirmary, the plan was abandoned because there just wasn ' t enough room. In 1936 the geology department was invited to share a new building with the chemists. Although physics was the logical choice, geology was chosen because it required less expensive equipment. The space is almost evenly divided between the two sciences, but chemistry encroaches upon three geology rooms, Mr. Watson bitterly informed us. Their relations, however, are amicable. Its new surroundings provide the geology department with ten times as much space as it had before, but the fossils and mineral specimens formerly housed in Dalton now completely occupy their present quarters. 28

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BEACONING THE VOTARIES

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The large airy rooms serve as storage and display space as well as labora- tories and lecture halls. The Camera Club, in droves, shares the depart- ment ' s dark room. Strangely enough, they entertain their Haverford friends there, and although Mr. Watson is afraid that any sudden move- ment might upset the delicate apparatus, they leave the place scrupulously clean. Newly acquired are a reflecting goniometer, for crystal measure- ments, and a Pulfrich refractometer. Mr. Crenshaw claims that this is one of the best chemistry buildings in the country. The General Ceramic Company cooperated in making the quantitative laboratory unique. It furnished the white-tiled table tops which make it possible to observe various color variations. Many of the sinks were also made to order, those in the first year laboratory according to Mr. Crenshaw ' s own specifications. The first year students splash; consequently the sinks do not run lengthwise, but cut across the tables. A hood is installed in each room to carry away the gases. Eighteen fans in a special chamber upstairs create a vacuum which sucks out the polluted air. Another precaution is the shower in the first year room to extinguish flaming clothes. The authorities voted against the inclusion of a drain to discourage too frequent use of the shower in warm weather. Equipped with the latest class room devices, the big lecture room is especially successful. The chemical chart was copied from a larger one at Harvard for one-twentieth of the cost of the original. Among the extraor- dinary features of this room are left-handed seats and sliding blackboards. Although the science building is isolated from the rest of the campus, the distance has had little effect on the attendance, according to Mr. Dryden. The situation has its defects, nevertheless. The power house showers everything with soot and the tennis courts lure students away from more scientific pursuits. One fresh young person summed up the building: It certainly has an aura around it. You can smell it a mile off. 29