“I’ve always been interested in science. My favorite class right now is chemistry, learning about all the chemical reactions that occur inside the body.

“I like to know stuff, like why everything happens the way it does. For example, why do children learn the most when they’re newborn to 3 years old? It just fascinates me how the brain works. Our brain drives us. It controls our body, our movements, everything. I want to know more about how that happens. I want to be a pediatric neurologist when I get older.

“I feel pretty lucky going to IMPACT (Early College High School). It’s going to take a lot of school to become a pediatric neurologist, so I wanted to get a head start.”

— Angel Lopez, 16

The post Looking for more answers about the brain appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“My dad was a chemist, and I was always fascinated with that sort of thing. I did all kinds of experiments as a kid. I invented things.

“When I was a junior in college I came up with light solution. All you did was add water and it made light. That was pretty special.

“You know something about light solution? It’s highly romantic, and I used that to get my very first girlfriend in 1969.

“Two churches in Buffalo, New York, booked a trip together to Syracuse, and I didn’t know any of the kids on the bus. I had my light solution and I had my science book. When we got off the bus for lunch, somebody took my book. That somebody was Kathy. When I got back on the bus she said, ‘Hi, I’m Kathy. Do you want your book back?’ I said, “No, you can read it.’

“Then later on I invited her to sit with me. After a little conversation, I got up enough courage to pop the question: ‘How would you like to see my light solution?’ She said she would, and I said, ‘You know, you have to see it in complete darkness.’

“So I took her up to my room in the hotel, turned off all the lights, and sat her on the bed. I took out a little beaker from my suitcase, poured a little bit of the light solution in there, added water, and it made a wonderful green-colored light. It was my most successful experiment ever. I’ve been married to Kathy now for 41 years.”

— Bob Botto

A chemist at ExxonMobil for 34 years, Bob transformed into Mr. Wizard to put on chemistry shows for students of all ages.

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The post Chemistry experiment lands him a wife for life appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We moved here from Mexico about three years ago. For my whole family it was like starting over because we didn’t have a house, my father didn’t have a great job and we didn’t speak English.

“The language has been the biggest challenge for all of us. I started going to an adult learning center program. I studied English, but I also studied math, history and all of that because I wanted to listen to the classes in English. Then I decided to go to college here.

“My major is chemistry. I would like to do research into new forms of renewable energy, so I probably will go for chemical engineering.

“I always was interested in chemistry. But when I moved here, I saw all of the refineries. I remember the first day I came here. It was at night, and the first thing I looked at was the sky. I couldn’t see the stars because of the pollution. Where I used to live, it was a very small town, and we didn’t have that much pollution. You could see the stars and we had this connection with nature. Then here, that seems to be a problem. So I thought, OK, I don’t like this. I started to do some research and get motivated about that. I started to think that I probably could do something to help.”

— Esmeralda Licea

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