Michael Tylinski, Cornell College’s 2017 Anderson Natural Science Lecturer, will speak on “From skateboarding on a tablet to brighter cell phone displays: Recent advances from the world of glass” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 26, in the Hall-Perrine Room of the Thomas Commons.
Tylinski will offer an overview of recent research progress and applications of a wide range of glasses. When Microsoft introduced its Surface tablet in 2012, they made news by dropping the tablet from shoulder height and by showing photos of an employee using the Surface as a skateboard. How did Microsoft make such a durable device? The key component was a new screen made of Gorilla Glass that was stronger and tougher than conventional glass.
When we hear the word “glass” we think first of the silicon dioxide glass of windows. But glasses are made from many chemicals and the many different types of glasses are used in applications all around us.
Tylinski, who received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016, conducted doctoral work on the motions of molecules at the surface of organic glasses, which is related to the effort to make a brighter, more efficient organic light-emitting diodes or OLEDs.
Anderson Natural Science Lecture
Richmond K. Anderson ’29 and his wife, Cleo Holland Anderson ’32, established the Anderson Natural Science Lecture in 1983 in honor of their families. Richmond earned a medical degree at Northwestern University and had a nearly 30-year international career in public health.
Previous Anderson Lecturers include Dudley Herschbach of Harvard, Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, and William Lipscomb of Harvard, all Nobel laureates in chemistry; Jerald Schnoor of the University of Iowa’s department of civil and environmental engineering; and Victor Weisskopf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology department of physics.