This lab explores issues that engineers and scientists face in working with thin film i.e., dealing with two phenomena that work against them: cracking and the coffee ring effect.
There are two activities in this lesson, the Fly Prison and the Water Maze. The Fly Prison is a hands-on modeling activity designed to introduce students to the area of nanotechnology and give them a basic understanding of how researchers build very small devices by the self-assembly of molecules. The Water Maze is a follow up activity to give the students a chance to practice and demonstrate what they have learned.
Students will visualize the order of numerical properties of objects from the nanoscale to visible scale using exponents and decimals. Students will make size comparisons of objects. Students will develop an understanding of how small a nanometer is in comparison to common objects. They will also learn about the metric system.
This lesson is designed to introduce liquid crystals, a fourth state of matter.Students will understand liquid crystals in relation to different phases of matter and learn the process of temperature based color change of the LQs
The purpose of this lesson is to help students understand the concepts of accuracy and precision
and how they are important in measurements at the nano-scale.
This activity is designed to help students understand the concept of scale and magnification when examining a Blue Morpho butterfly wing. The activity requires the use of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) but images are provided if there is no access to an SEM.
These labs are designed to help students understand diffraction, how a grating diffracts light, and how this method can be used to determine nanoscale structure.
