NISE Network Blog

Visitors to the Sciencenter in Ithaca, NY, are blowing bubbles and exploring the nanoworld at the same time.

Visitors to the outdoor science park investigate the properties of bubbles, structures that self-assemble from soap film. They also create large soap films, observing that the colors of the film depend on its thickness. Summer campers are using clear nail polish to make rainbow-colored thin films that won't pop.

Campers at the Austin Children's Museum will be learning about molecules and mixing up a batch of polymer slime this summer, as well as extracting strawberry DNA, and doing the liquid crystals activity from the NanoDays kit in the museum's Girls Explore Science Camp.

The NISE Net has a forum called "Risks, Benefits, and Who Decides?" but maybe the question should be "How do they decide?"

Mike Rathbun at the Discovery Center Museum in Rockford, IL recently emailed saying that they plan to conduct a 2-day teacher workshop on nanoscale science plus they're attempting daily nano cart demos on their floor all summer.

For this installment of the NanoDays Blog, I want you to answer the question: How did you plan and schedule your NanoDays event?

NanoDays 2009 at Maryland Science Center

It's all-summer-programming-all-the-time on the Nano Bite this week. Here are a few examples of how partners are incorporating nano topics into their regular summer programming:

• Magnets Arizona Science Center is making magnetism more intriguing by introducing kids to ferrofluid, from the activity Exploring Materials—Ferrofluid. Jeannie Colton can tell you more: coltonj@azscience.org.
  

Sylvia Algire, Assistant Manager of the Field Trips department at the Exploratorium just emailed a comment about her experience with NanoDays 2009.

Photo by Carl Mydans from the LIFE Photo Archive

As I mention in the June Nano Bite newsletter, lots of NISE Net partners are either planning nano-themed summer camps or using nano activities from the NanoDays kit or other sources in their camp programming.

I'll be posting examples all this week, here's one of an entirely nano summer camp program:

How did you explain NanoDays to your PR team?

First, thanks to the folks who've contributed examples to the Kit Activities vs. Non-Kit Activities post.