Performance art and science collide as students experience “Blue Man Group”

On a blustery December afternoon, with final exams and winter break on the horizon, the 500 undergraduate students enrolled in Professor Bradley Pentelute’s Course 5.111 (Principles of Chemical Science) class were treated to an afternoon at the theater — a performance of “Blue Man Group” at Boston’s Charles Playhouse — courtesy of Pentelute and the MIT Office of the First Year. Theatrical thrills aside, it was Blue Man Group’s practical application of chemical principles that inspired Pentelute to initiate and fund this excursion. The MIT Office of the First Year…