lrose's blog

The changes that were made in  agenda from the suggestions  of the high school teachers  made a much better institute.  Attendees did not seem to  get board or lost.    Val moved her talk on applications for today to this afternoon  it was good.

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Addressing misconceptions

Problem 1.  What students hear and what we say are 2 different things?

Problem 2.   how do we know what student know?

Problem 3.   whiteboarding — not permanent  how do we have them have a permanent record of what students do?

Problem 4.  How to grade and what do we grade?

whiteboarding homework is a reason to have it done and not having to grade it!!!  still must walk around the room and check that the work is done.

Problem 5 : how much material can a student learn at a time.  LIke forcing a shreaded wheat down there throat .   Will they come back   for breakfast the next day.   But if we make them mini wheats and sugar coat them might they come back .

This curriculum is like these people have read my mind and added activities that will actually do what I want.  I am awed.

Avogadro– how much do we teach about him?

A lab to prove oxygen is diatomic.  that the number of particles  in equal volumes of the gas must be the same.    Try mole rockets lab.  Google micro mole rockets.

Dalton’s playhouse

Ring of truth video

The bean, rice and pasta lab goes right along with the chemistry modeling.  In fact,   I think its a clearer connection with Avogadro’s principal that there are the same number of particles in every mole.

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modeling is a way of giving students experiences or relating the experiences they already have to get at the concepts in chemistry.

We use whiteboards to present our explanations of everyday phenomena.

1st.  we did diffusion in air  what is happening at the particle level  –  cologne

2nd.  we did diffusion in  a liquid.  dye in hot water and cold water.

then we talked about pressure.  filled up a tube with water why didn’t it pour out.

blow up the sealed garbage bag with  6 straws  –  raise  a person off the ground.

lots of good data on a thumb drive.  all the curriculum.  s\

Showed the Eureka video  –  we show this .   it is on you tube.   other sites to see   google : molo

google :  tankerview    or www.doctorslime.com also try phet or youtube.  or concord consortium

This afternoon  we will work on PVT problems

We worked with Vernier probes and compared the pressure with temperature, pressure with volume and pressure with amount of gas.   We took our data and used the whiteboard to present our findings.  We were each assigned one of the conditions and had to make a graph, draw  a picture of what is happening with the representative particles and finally find a relationship between them( try an equation)

After the presentation we did worksheets that go along with these lab activities.  We did one problem together and presented it on the white board

Discussion of temperature — we know from the video that temperature is a measure of the motion of the particles.  So if there is no motion in the particles the temperature should be zero  it is in fact from the lab extrapolated the teimperature to be -273 degrees celsius.      so absolute zero is -273 K.   If we have degrees  celcius,  then we must adjust the temperature by 273  then the units will be Kelvin. (K)

White boards are essential.   My how time flies when you are engaged.  It was 3:50 before we even realized .

Homework — oh no

take the ABCC– Assessment of Basic Chemistry Concepts

Read the 2 articles Socratic teaching — managing white board discussion

and  great ideas and chemistry .

We are assigned to go over unit 2 and be ready to make a white board presentation by Friday– by our group.

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All of our smaller  designs have come from the statement , There is always room at the bottom”  In order to make things bigger and more efficient and faster.

Nano research is already producing clothes that are water and soil resistant. Research is being done in the realm of medicine– make chemicals or robots to do medical procedures,  self healing paint– scratch your paint – set your car in the sun and in a few hours it will have healed the scratch,  paint that cleans the Air

One Reason for studying nanotechnology is that computers are reaching the limit of the technology for making them as we do now.  We are beginning to explore the crazy ideas for different ways of computing.   For example, quantum dot cellular automata(QCA) and nanotube and nanowires and quantum computers(qbits)

Path for new products

Crazy ideas

Research

Development

Finished products.

Research and development often is blurred together.  Crazy ideas are hard to funding .  and its easier  to get funding for almost finished products.  But almost finished products were crazy ideas 5 or 10 years ago.

the tools for studying surface chemistry at a nanoscale are the SEM, AFM and STM,  We want to discover what are the limitation of each and when each scope would be most useful.

Reflections from participants this afternoon

The teachers seemed to be happy with the week.  They have each learned something and all had some suggestions.  each of their powerpoints are uploaded on the nano wiki.  http://nano.michianastem.org/

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Becky explained how a scanning tunneling microscope worked.  We demonstrated the portable STM.  The STM works in a  world ruled by quantum physics  instead of  classical physics,    Electrons are able to tunnel because they are moving from an electron state of higher energy to an electron state of lower energy.  This happens even though in the classical world they should not be able to move at all.

the AFM obeys the laws of classical physics and if measuring force.  While the STM is ruled by quantum physics and is meauring electrical charge change that is cause by electrons moving to a lower energy state.

I talked about my research this summer with the irradiation of gold(III)  that had been exposed to octothiol.   I explained we were trying to see what happens at the surface when alpha particles  bombard the gold surface.  we are especially interested in the size of the events and what happens at the margins.

Sean and Guido described their projects.  Guido gave his impression of the research experience so far since he has only been with the lab 4 weeks.  Sean gave a overview of his research and explained where he was at and what he was trying to do.

we were disappointed the scope did not work.   It was almost impossible to get it to approach.  I was not able to understand why it wan’t working.

The afternoon the teachers worked on their reflections for the symposium.

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Val  did a great job of explaining what the AFM is and how the AFM works.    She talked about the the electronic feedback circuit.  Describe what the P gain and I gain control.   She showed 3 images- one good, one with too high a P gain and 1 with too low a P gain.   It was clear that having to high a P gain would cause streaky pictures and too low an I gain would not allow us to see the features.

We looked at the tips for the AFM–which are silicon covered with nitride.

Now we did an analogous experiment to the AFM using a box with tubes and with varying amounts of ping pong balls in each.   we gathered data and analyzed it using math then we build a picture of the surface using legos.

Once legos were built we  drew a picture of the surface. it was obvious  the connection between the activity and the AFM.

Val started scanning on the AFM and all the teachers watched.  It would be more fun if the teachers could actually run the machine.  I think.   I like doing rather than watching.

How is this nanotechnology going to impact my classroom activities?   How can I introduce nanotechnology into Chemistry and ICP?  I am going to use the scaling activities when I introduce measurements in ICP and maybe in Chemistry.  The calculation of the density of the proton is a definite warm-up or exit activity.

To make the ping pong balls activity more collaborative.   Have each group do the questions and drawings on a white board.  Have each group post them around the room and have the class do a walk around  and look at every other groups results.  Close with a socratic seminar style reflection discussion everyone’s results.   Then have student’s write about what they learned.

Do the scale activity but have a clothesline but use each power of 10 as 1cm.  give students each 1 or 2 objects and put them on the line at the place they would be so they can begin to get the idea of scale.

Tomorrow is the STM.        whoopee!!!!!!

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On Tuesday,  we worked with optics and discussed measurements and scale of measurements.  We made a telescope from a kit and then inverted to see that it can also be a microscope.  We added an additional lens. I will leave it to you to try and see what happens when we add an additional lens.

We played a scale game-putting things in order of magnitude.  Then we discussed that idea that if a fly lands on an elephant the mass of the element does not really change the mass of the elephant enough to make a difference.

We tried to use the SEM.  We were not successful in getting the gun lined up to get an image.  YUK!!!!!!!!!!

In the afternoon there was a tour of the facilities that Notre Dame has for research community.  Hopefully, people begin to see the possibilities for interaction with the community.

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This is the first day of the conference.  5 junior and senior high school teachers are attending.  The video to introduce nanotechnology (http://vimeo.com/12622654)   it very good.   Any student would understand how small nano scale is.   We will explore how object that are less than 100 nanometers in size act and react with the surroundings.

We spent a lot of time today talking to each other and describing what we do and how we investigate the nano world.   We  will introduce each of the scopes we use and use some microscopes that are computer driven .

Dr. Marya Lieberman talked to us about the history of nanotechnology.    One of the early researchers,  Schon,  was shown to have falsified the data.  In spite of this set back,  molecular electronics have progressed and give a vision for  what might the future might be for nanoelectronics.  Very interesting !!

Dr. Lieberman discussed what her experiment envisions it can do.

“The goal is to have the computers in 20 years to be unrecognizeable as compared to todays computers– just like the ENIAC programmers in 1947  would not recognize the desk top computers we are working on today.”

Michael Crocker introduced the topic of Scale and orders of magnitude.  We discussed how orders of magnitude  change the world and the effect that things have on their surroundings,

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Since Val and Lauren found the large objects ,  Dr, Kadel suggested we look at another substance that was irradiated.  So Graphite is available and Molybdenum disulfide is also available.  We tried Graphite first.  Even though the Carbon atom is very small compared to the gold atom,  we hoped to be able to see collisions.

After several days of scanning Graphite,  I haven’t had much success in finding anything but graphite.  Very few  if any even possible events.

Dr Kandel suggested trying the molybdenum disulfide.   I did but had no success in scanning it with any resolution.  I went back to Graphite.

To make a graphite sample,  you use the high tech scotch tape and press it onto a sample of graphite  and pull it off rapidly to cleave a layer of graphite on the tapes surface.  Hopefully, you have a nice smooth  sample.  place a paper holder around the sample and place the sample in the holder on the Polonium 210 sample for 12 or more hours.

I have just begun  to explore these samples.  I have a couple of scans that might be possible events.  Time is running out for me though.  I must scan as much as possible   because the summer is coming  rapidly to an end.

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