Kyle Hartson and Connor Kucharski, both seniors, are Strnad fellows who are conducting a Strnad about glue. They are attempting to devise a pitch glue and study adhesive properties. So far, they have established a baseline for what is a good glue. Their next stage is to design their own adhesive using resins collected from campus.
Their Strnad program revolves around the designing of pitch glue, an adhesive made from resin, or sticky organic materials found from trees. Kyle Hartson stated “What our hope is that by playing with different properties and adding different polymers we could either make a glue that could be used for different applications not just sealing a canoe and see if there are use for something as sculpture building, ceramics, or woodworking.” Connor Kucharski said “As of now, we are making our own adhesive. We’re heating up different resins and combining them with polymers and then we are gluing them to an apparatus in Mr. Harmen’s room. We have little sample blocks with hooks attached to them and we glue the sample block to a sample material and we hook the thing on and we allow it to cure onto the sample block. Then we will hang a bucket from a hook and drop weight into it until it fails to see how strong the glue is.” Connor further states “The majority of what we have done so far is to set up a baseline for what is a good glue. So we have tested commercial glues and we have established a baseline. For wood to wood surfaces, superglue is a very good adhesive and will hold up to 3000% of the weight you put on the block. For wood to metal, Elmer’s wood glue is not great at gluing metal surfaces. So far we have our baseline of what is a good glue. Next, we are going to retest both of those combinations with our adhesive.”
However, Kyle further went on to say “I would not consider our testing process the main focus of our project. That is just what we need to establish a baseline. The understanding I want to gain from this isn’t necessarily how you test but more so how you make the glue, the chemistry behind it. Which is why Dr. Dike is such a great resource.” Kyle articulated “There are so many factors that come into how a glue is going to adhere. For example, shearing strain on a glue is going to test it a lot more than if I were to just hang a weight. That is a variable we have to test. unfortunately, given the amount of time we’re working with we are probably not going to do that in depth testing.”
They both conveyed that “The inspiration and goal of this project is ultimately to give back. I know a lot of kids benefit from having Strnads through things like the Cleveland Clinic and various established programs such as the Anderson Scholars Program. So a lot of them are doing research at Case with professors and Doctors. Compared to theirs ours, is something more of what you would see as a science fair project. Ultimately, I don’t think we’re going for the same goal. Our project is more so just to understand sustainability and how to use the resources in our immediate area, and less so to gather a very empirical understanding through empirical testing of whatever our project happens to be about.” However, both Kyle Hartson and Connor Kucharski will be graduating soon, and Connor said “We want to pass it on to a junior or sophomore who wants to continue to work on our Strnad.”