What’s it feel like to squish a virus?
With the help of a device called the nanoManipulator, students across the state are learning how to answer that question. They have prodded, poked and even popped a virus. The students move the nanoManipulator stylus over a virus, and the nanoManipulator pushes back – recreating the bumps, grooves and rough edges of the nanoworld. The stylus acts as a sophisticated joy stick and controls a microscope capable of imaging matter on a very small scale. The microscope sends feedback about the sample to the stylus, letting students “get a feel” for the virus they’re moving. It’s all part of a lesson in nanoscience – the study of matter at a scale of one-billionth of a meter.
Behind the project is a team of education experts and scientists – the NanoScale Science Education Research Group – who hopes this glimpse of cutting-edge technology inspires future scientists. The group crosses institutional and disciplinary borders to combine state-wide outreach programs with education research. Coming from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, the faculty is made up of experts in a broad array of fields, from computer science to educational psychology to physics.
Viruses, which are smaller than bacteria and cells, exist on the nanometer scale. And because everybody has dealt with a stomach virus or flu, researchers say viruses act as a springboard to get students interested and engaged in nanotechnology, as well as science in general.
“By using viruses, we can begin to talk about materials at this level that students can relate to,” says Gail Jones, professor of science education at N.C. State.
With the nanoManipulator teachers add another dimension – touch – to a basic science lesson about atoms and molecules.
“Everybody can picture the classic textbook diagram of the atom, but when you’re able to pick up a nanoManipulator and actually go in and feel large molecules, then students have a better idea about what that a molecular structure might look like and a better understanding of atoms and molecules,” says Jones.
To Jones, and many of the researchers studying how students learn about nanotechnology, touch is a crucial component to the learning process. For most people, their sense of scale drops off at about a millimeter, so it can be difficult to make sense of nanometer scale when even a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick. Adding the sense of touch, whether it's students moving the stylus of a nanoManipulator to feel a virus or building a model of a possible nanomachine out of plastic tubes, magnets, and ping pong balls, can help students overcome the difficulty of conceptualizing how small a nanometer is.
“Without touch, I think nanotechnology is even harder to understand. And if we’re not careful it can sort of all be magic – something we can’t see or understand,” says Jones.
But nanotechnology is quickly becoming something that we can see. More and more businesses in North Carolina are moving nanotechnology past the research stage into products, like stronger, lighter golf clubs to stain-resistant pants. Some predict that this growing technology will become a significant force in the North Carolina economy. Scientists in the NanoScale Science Education Research Group say educating kids in nanotechnology can be “the carrot on a stick” that motivates them to finish their chemistry homework.
Michael Falvo, a research professor in physics at UNC-CH, says the educational power behind nanotechnology is that it can draw in students who would not normally be interested in science. The diversity of disciplines working together in nanotechnology also entices students into the field.
“Because nanotechnology is sort of a gee-whiz, cutting-edge of science area, it’s a good tool for helping kids understand not only the specifics of nanotechnology, but also the general excitement about science,” says Falvo.
In 2002,Falvo and Jones received funding from the NSF to develop a new course to teach undergraduates about nanotechnology. Falvo says that after the class some of his students conducted nanoscience research with him in the lab or went on to intern nanotechnology internships at various companies around the country.
For some students, the most life-changing part of a nanoscience lesson isn’t the nanoscience – it’s the scientist behind it. Interacting with a scientist can change a student’s assumptions about science. A student from Orange High School said that he thought a scientist was a “dorky person who wears glasses and a white lab coat that has no life out of science.” But after chatting with two scientists, he said they “had lives outside their work and were all nice, normal people.”
Another student expressed surprise to see that many scientists are women. Jones says, “We figured we were a success if we helped even one student understand that scientists are all kinds of people, men and women, majority and minority, and that anybody can do science.”
This spring, Jones is planning a state-wide nanotechnology education festival-- Nanodays at N.C. State, UNC-CH and Appalachian State University. Students and teachers across the state will get the chance to check out open nanotechnology labs, engage in public seminars with scientists and see various physics demonstrations and uses of nanotechnology, such as Nano-Tex’s stain resistant fabric.
Jones says, “We want students to see that science is an extremely cool career and that nanoscale science is an exploding area of amazing development.”
The NanoScale Science Education Research Group receives funding for research and outreach projects from the National Science Foundation. Nanodays is planned in collaboration with Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, the Science House, Museum of Life and Science, the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology and the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.
Related Links
Michael Falvo's course website - "Handcrafting at the Nanoscale"
By Lynn Thomasson
Lynn is a junior majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her spare time, she writes stories for Endeavors Magazine and ScienceCarolina at UNC-Chapel Hill, and works as an intern for the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology
