Vol. 10 No. 1 (2015)

Dear Reader,

You hold in your hands the culmination of one decade of dedicated labour by the undergraduate Science community. From its humble beginnings at the 2005 Undergraduate Research Conference, the yearly publication of the McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal has become a robust resource, giving students across disciplines and universities a voice for their research; uniting leaders and novices around the world as peer reviewer and researcher; providing undergraduates with invaluable critique of their writing style; and helping the uninitiated dive into the world of research through the hosting of workshops and the opening of invaluable dialogue regarding the world of academia.

As one of North America’s first peer-reviewed undergraduate research journals, MSURJ is proud to have remained a bastion providing aspiring scientists a platform to communicate their findings and develop themselves as researchers. It is perhaps a testament to our core values that the authors of our inaugural volume have since become world-class researchers, some holding faculty positions at renowned institutions around the world.

These past ten years have proven to be years of tremendous growth and challenge at MSURJ. We couldn’t have done any of it without the vivacious research culture at universities such as McGill; the contributions of our authors; the diligent work ethic of the editorial board; or the support of our advisors, our donors, and our readership.

On behalf of the editorial board of the tenth edition of MSURJ - we thank you.

Deborah Baremberg & Blair Jia
Co-Editors-in-Chief

On the Cover:

Cadmium yellow and cadmium red are two colours of paint featured prominently in the paintings of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri Matisse. Though we now take full-spectrum colour for granted, the brilliant, opaque shades of cadmium yellow did not become commercially available until after the Industrial Revolution in the 1840s, and cadmium red even later in 1919.

The chemical advancements of the Industrial Revolution allowed painters to produce their vibrant work, and in the present day, modern chemistry is equally important to preserve their lustre. The constituent chemicals of cadmium yellow and cadmium red, cadmium sulfide (CdS) and cadmium selenide (CdSe), are two of three cadmium compounds featured in this issue’s work by Riddle et al. Their research (p11) uses Raman spectroscopy to examine these compounds’ stability over a wide range of temperatures, motivated in part by their use in artwork past and present. The Raman spectra of CdS (courtesy of the author) is laid over top.