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Photo by Reed Hutchison UCLA Photographic
Services
High school teachers David Hicks (from the left), Elizabeth Garcia
and Lynn Kim work on an experiment to create a solar cell. |
SUMMER SCIENCE LESSONS
High school teachers tackle nanoscience
BY STUART WOLPERT AND SHAENA ENGLE
UCLA Today
Two dozen high school science teachers were intently bent over worktables
in a Geology Building classroom putting together glass “sandwiches,”
two small glass rectangles smeared in between with a chemical solution.
Ordinary office binder clips held the pieces together.
Underlying this experiment that looked easy enough for a ninth grader
to perform was a new realm of science that is as cutting-edge as most
of these teachers had ever encountered before — nanoscience. They
were using nanocrystalline titania stained with raspberry or spinach juice
to absorb enough energy from the sun to create solar cells.
“It’s very high-level, very complicated, and it involves
a lot of science,” said Lynn Kim from Fairfax High School, who teaches
ninth graders, primarily the children of immigrants, in a school where
students speak 150 different languages. “But it’s good that
we can take something that’s very cutting-edge back to the classroom.”
Kim and her fellow science teachers from low-income schools across Los
Angeles came to UCLA two weeks ago to learn how to invigorate their classes
by teaching nanoscience — the science of the tiniest particles that
will someday lead to extraordinary advances in medicine and many other
fields.
“The teachers are learning a set of experiments to get their students
excited and motivated about learning science,” said Sarah Tolbert,
an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a member of the
California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), a joint enterprise of UCLA and
UC Santa Barbara. Working with Tolbert and the teachers were graduate
students and postdoctoral scholars from CNSI and UCLA’s Materials
Creation Training Program, funded by the National Science Foundation.
The nanoscience program is part of the summer offerings of the UCLA Science
Project in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.
The cost of building the nanoscience experiments was supported by a grant
from UCLA’s Center for Community Partnerships.
Participating were teachers from Crenshaw, Fairfax, Carson, Franklin,
Jordan and Verdugo Hills. During a lesson in photolithography, they made
a tiny piece of a computer chip. Using simple materials, they experimented
with the changing properties of nanomaterials and learned about the self-assembly
process.
Explained Tolbert: “Scientists working at the nanometer length-scale
have the potential to change the properties of materials just by changing
their dimensions. This makes work in the field exciting and makes the
experiments fun and challenging for both scientists and students.”
The teachers, who will come back to campus during the school year to
study other topics as UCLA science fellows, said they want their students
to “connect” with this new field. “I’m going to
talk to my students about the relevance of nanotechnology in their everyday
lives,” said teacher Elizabeth Garcia from Carson High School. “It’s
in the coating on their television and computer monitor screens. It’s
involved in the L.E.D.s that light up their shoes. It’s used in
making the computer chips in their electronic games.”
“Our goal is to improve science education for all students in Los
Angeles,” said Irene Swanson, director of the UCLA Science Project.
“The program provides a collegial network for science educators
from all levels to share expertise and new ideas.”
For more on the UCLA Science Project, go to http://csmp.ucop.edu/csp/ucla/about.php. |
