Schools
The interest in nanomaterials and nanotechnology was started by Richard Feynman [a famous particle physicist and lecturer] in 1959, who gave a talk entitled ‘plenty of room at the bottom’. Ultimately, nanomaterials is about making materials with atomic precision, allowing increadible control of their properties and enabling a whole range of applications. Such atomic control can already be achieved in the scientific laboratory and control at the tens of nanometer scale is commonly found in the electronics industry.
It’s a small world, an education programme for school students set up and supported by NanoCentral was launched at NanoMaterials07. Dr. Ian Kinloch from the University of Manchester lead an interactive event that demonstrated the extraordinary benefits of nanomaterials. A favourite with the students was the un-stainable shirt, where red food colouring was squirted onto the shirt containing a nanomaterial, and ran off the surface without making a mark – very handy! There were definitely some budding scientists in the audience who were invited from schools in the area. Each school was given a specially designed poster and buckyballs to construct on the way home.
A teachers’ handout has also been developed within the programme and is available upon request from NanoCentral. It explains nanomaterials in simple terms from how they are made, top-down and bottom-up, to their applications in everyday objects. It also includes recommended reading and classroom experiments for teachers.
The programme is to be developed and expanded more in the future with more schools being sent educational material. There are fewer and fewer young people going into science, however it is as important as ever to keep their interest in subjects that shape our lives and are essential in helping to combat the challenges of today and the future.
NanoCentral hopes that the programme will attract more schools and inspire even more scientists of the future. For more information on nanomaterials, or for details of the it’s a small world programme, including a teachers’ handout, contact Dr Steve Devine on 01740 625 729