CHEMICAL CONNECTIONS in the holy land

The morning of the 10th of June, our MIT extension group ventured to the Tel Ha Shomer area to a ground forces Army base for the Israeli Defense Force. To our great delight, we were taken on a tour of the Chemical Syntheses Center, which is literally the only chemical army base center in all of Israel. This particular place was even more interesting because it works directly with the U.S. TSA to protect against undetectable homemade bombs that could penetrate airport security. These certain bombs are extremely threatening because they are comparable to or even more potent than TNT, yet are synthesized from household or easily attainable items. Ways in which this team identifies and prevents this kind of threat is by recreating and isolating the compound in order to train dogs to identify them. They also try to predict how these certain threats are detonated in order to easily recognize suspicious behaviors, like for example the underwear bomber who tried to light his pants on fire while on a commercial plane.

We as MIT students completely loved this visit as it showed applications of experimental chemistry that can be used to protect the general public. Most bombs that are used in this era are no longer electronically detonated because that can be easily detected. Instead, most of the threats are based in the chemistry of taking mildly dangerous compounds and creating even more threatening compounds. Chemistry majors, such as myself, can consider a career in research in detecting these threats thus securing our modes of transportation such as airplanes and trains.

I would like to personally thank you for making this program a possibility for myself and my MIT peers. It has been both engaging and informative and I'm taking away so many new ideas and memories from my experiences thus far.