Meeting is on March 4, 8pm
The topic of this month’s presentation is carbon. Carbon is important to life as we know it, but it is also an important chemical element in matters of geology, mineralogy, and human inventions. Carbon is the carbon in carbonates, which are an important and ubiquitous part of the mineral world, and almost every beginning collector has a carbonate mineral like calcite or siderite in their collections. Carbon is also the principal element in fossil fuels like coal and petroleum, which are also prime sources of carbon for various uses and products. Carbon atoms have the important ability to bind to other carbon atoms, and they can form chemical bonds with up to four other atoms, be they other carbon atoms, or atoms of other elements. Because of this, carbon forms the greatest number of chemical compounds of all the elements. This means that the number of uses for carbon is mind-boggling. While iron-56 is the most stable of all isotopes, carbon is the most versatile of all the elements.
Our speaker this month is none other than the Club’s program director, David Bellamy. David finished a 34-year teaching career in June of 2018, most of which was spent at North Toronto Collegiate Institute where he taught Sciences at the grade 9 and 10 levels, and Biology as well as Earth & Space Science at the grade 11 and 12 levels, respectively. He has an eclectic thirst for knowledge, especially in the sciences. These interests include astronomy, genetics, geology, mineralogy, and zoology. He is also something of a packrat as evidenced by a sizeable collection of just about anything imaginable that is related to minerals. He has also been an avid collector of frog figurines for the last several years such that frogs have become his trademark among his friends and peers.