MHS Student is Semifinalist in Siemens Math, Science and Technology Competition

Methacton High School senior Yinan Kang was recently named among the semifinalists in the Siemens Math, Science, and Technology Competition.

This national competition allows students to submit intensive research projects for judging. Yinan’s work focuses on bringing a 21st-century perspective to the works of Professor Robert Burns Woodward, a nobel-prize winning organic chemistry professor.

Woodward’s 1940’s work at Harvard University focuses on UV rules and the Octant rule, which provide two and three dimensional structures of steroid molecules.

Yinan found a way to use modern day technology to make the teaching and utilization of such brilliant rules easier.

Using a computer program, he developed a computer model to help make the Octant rule and UV rules easier to understand. His hope is that his work, published in The Journal of Chemical Education, will help generations of
chemists to come.

Yinan's work can be viewed online at: http://tinyurl.com/cnyctvy.

Information courtesy of Methacton School District.