CHN Associate Director Glen Miller explains to local science teachers why commercial applications of nanotechnology will never be achieved by moving one atom at a time.

UNH Brings Nanotechnology to Local Schools

By Bob Emro, CEPS

UNH researchers brought local elementary, middle and high school educators to the cutting edge of science last week at the K-12 Nanotechnology Teacher Institute.
 
Two dozen New Hampshire teachers spent the week learning from researchers with the Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing. “This is a chance for K-12 teachers to learn about nanotechnology in general and get an in-depth look at the research initiatives here at UNH,” said CHN Associate Director and associate chemistry professor Glen Miller, who organized the event with CHN’s K-12 Outreach Coordinator Susan Greenberg. “That way, they can teach their students about the latest developments in this rapidly developing field.”
 
During the week, the teachers learned about what advances nanotechnology might bring to medicine from Jerome Claverie, a research associate professor with UNH’s Materials Science Program who is developing “nanocaplets” for the oral delivery of drugs such as insulin. They also got a tour of assistant physics professor Karsten Pohl’s lab and the scanning tunneling microscope he uses in the development of “nanotemplates.”
 
“Kids today are way ahead of the kids when I was in high school—you have to spend your summers catching up,” said Cathy Little, a chemistry teacher at Pinkerton Academy in Derry. “This will help us to help our students to choose a career.”
 
The teachers worked with Dawn Meredith of the UNH Physics Department and Barbara Hopkins of UNH’s Joan and James Leitzel Center for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Education to begin the process of bringing that knowledge back to their classrooms. Over the next four years, the center will work with interested teachers to fully develop, implement and evaluate those curricular activities. 
 
“I think my students are definitely going to be working in a field that we don’t even know yet,” said Linda Bilodeau, a third grade teacher at Peter Woodbury Elementary School in Bedford. “If we don’t open their eyes today, where are they going to go?”
 
Nanotechnology is incredibly small—between the size of a molecule and a red blood cell—but it’s expected to have a big economic impact—generating $1 trillion annually by 2015, according to the National Science Foundation. Someday many of the students in these teachers’ classrooms could be employed by the industry.
 
The teachers heard about the social and ethical dimensions of this emerging field from Ken Geiser of UMass Lowell. “I think it’s interesting for kids to see the evolution of this technology because they’ll be around to see it, and how the government deals with it” said Rye Junior High School science teacher Sheila Adams.
 
Arthur Greenberg, UNH professor of chemistry and former dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, spoke about the differences between science fiction like Michael Crichton’s Prey and reality. “This needs to be talked about in the classroom with our students so that after they read a book like Prey, they realize that this is not the way the world is going,” said Spaulding High School science teacher Pat Sukduang.
 
Injecting nanotechnology into the lesson plan will make science more fun for their students, according to the participating teachers. “When I go back and mention nanotechnology, their eyes are going to light up and they’re going to say, ‘What do you know about it?’” said Laconia High School science teacher Jason Lacroix.
 
The Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing, which includes UNH, Northeastern University and the UMass Lowell, was created last fall with a $12.4 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Its goal is to develop general tools for manufacturing at the nano scale and apply them to two specific products in the next five years: biosensors that can be implanted in the body for early detection of diseases and nanotube memory chips that can store much more information than conventional silicon chips.