Students Scan the Very Small
From Journal and Courier, June 29, 2006
New vistas in science served up for workshop attendees
By Erin Smith
(By Michael Heinz/Journal and Courier) Tyrone Wheeler, a student in the summer engineering workshop group at Purdue University, looks at one of the exhibits in the Purdue-created nanotechnology exhibit Wednesday. Visitors to the exhibit can learn about nanotechnology through video animations, a wall of nano art, hands-on activities, posters and a LEGO scanning probe microscope.
Until Wednesday, the only place Wesley Willis had heard or learned anything about nanotechnology was from TV.
"I just knew like -- small robots and stuff," said Willis, a ninth-grader from Scarsdale, N.Y., describing his preconceived notion of the tiny technology.
After touring Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center, Willis and other students participating in the Summer Engineering Workshop and other summer programs are more informed about the science behind nanotechnology.
An interactive exhibit designed to teach elementary and middle school students about nanotechnology is on display in the Birck center. The exhibit has been at the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge in Tennessee.
Purdue students and faculty involved in the Engineering Projects in Community Service, or EPICS, built the exhibit. Titled "Nanotechnology: The science of making things smaller," the display includes video animation kiosks, hands-on activities, posters and the LEGO scanning probe microscope.
"Nanotechnology works with things that are very small — so small you can't see them with ordinary microscopes," said Mike Melloch, director of education and outreach for the Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing.
During Wednesday's tour with the Summer Engineering Workshop students, Melloch pointed out a LEGO scanning probe microscope — a larger scale model of an atomic scanning probe microscope — as it measured the height of a simple LEGO design.
"Think of each LEGO block like an atom," he said. "We want to get a picture of that surface, and we're going to do that with touch."
Melloch explained that thousands of data points may need to be collected to draw a clear picture of the surface. Atomic scanning probe microscopes work in a similar fashion, he said.
"You generate all these points and then the computer generates all these pictures," Melloch said, gesturing to framed pictures on the walls nearby.
Students also toured the Birck center, looking inside the clean room and learning firsthand from Purdue scientists about the research going on at the center.
Mercedes LaLand, a ninth-grader from Indianapolis, believes it's possible she'll be using nanotechnology if she pursues a career as a biologist or biomedical engineer. Examining individual molecules and building structures atom-by-atom could become a big part of the future of science, she said.
"Everything's moving so fast," LaLand said.
Added Willis: "Things are always getting smaller and more compact."
The nanotechnology exhibit will remain on display in the Birck center's atrium through the summer and possibly longer, Melloch said. If other museums or organizations are interested in displaying the exhibit, it may travel to other locations, he explained.