Exhibits

Some of the premier science exhibition developers in the United States are part of the NISE Network. They bring with them a deep understanding of what makes engaging informal learning experiences. Through a process of prototyping, audience research, and in-depth partnerships with scientists, NISE Net partners have developed a catalog of exhibit components about nanoscale science.

Exhibit packages

Intro to Nano

Lead developer: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
Components:
Intro video: Get a quick overview of what nanoscale science is all about, including a dive down to the crazy scale of nanotech.
Self-assembly air hockey: Find out how self-assembly of molecules is one of the key steps in developing usable nanotech.
A billion beads: If nanotechnology happens at a billionth of a meter, just how small is that?
Quantum dots: Quantum dots are one of the key components of many new nanotechnologies. How do these unique molecules work?

Nano Medicine

Lead developer: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
Components:
Detecting disease: Nanotechnology is giving us new tools to detect disease earlier than ever before. How do these new tools work?
Treating disease: Nanotechnology is also changing the way we treat disease. Cutting-edge treatments use materials as small (or smaller!) as the tiniest parts of cells in the body. Researchers think nanomedicine will affect only specifically targeted cells, with fewer side effects on the rest of the body.
Repairing tissues: Researchers are working on ways to repair tissues with nanotechnology. Nerve injuries are typically permanent because scar tissue prevents injured nerve cells from reconnecting. But a special fluid injected into an injured brain self-assembles into a nanoscaffold that actually helps neurons grow toward each other, "knitting" the wounded brain back together.
Research stories: Use this interactive media kiosk to dig deeper into the stories behind research in nanomedicine.

Nano Lab/Fact or Fiction?

Lead developer: Sciencenter
Nano lab: Dress up in a lab coats and work at different activity stations to detect and manipulate model atoms.
Fact or fiction?: Find out about nanotechnology, fact and fiction, and the relative scale of nano-sized technology. Make a model of a tiny, imaginary machine, then express your own ideas and opinions as you write about your creation.

Stand-alone components

Lead developer: Science Museum of Minnesota
These exhibit components aren't specifically related to any of the larger packages, but offer engaging "hooks" into nanoscale science. The interactives focus on how nanoscience is harnessing nanoscale phenomena seen in nature to create new techniques, materials, and products.

Bump and roll: Cabbage leaves are water-resistant and self-cleaning; scientists are developing nanomaterials with similar properties. Drip water droplets onto a cabbage leaf or a human-made superhydrophobic surface, and change the angle of the surface to see how the water behaves. Find out about super-small bumps that make this surprising behavior possible.

Changing colors: Super-small, light-reflecting structures--not pigments--create the intense, iridescent colors of butterfly wings; scientists are developing nanomaterials with similar properties. Change the orientation of butterfly wings or human-made films to a light source and see how the colors shift. Discover how super-thin, transparent films with nanoscale spacing between them can manipulate light and create color.

Immersive experiences

Three drops
Lead developers: Snibbe Interactive and Exploratorium
This interactive media piece shows how different forces can be observed at different scales. Use your shadow to interact with water at three very different levels. In one segment, the falling water is shown at the human scale, and gravity is the noticeable force. In the next segment, you're about one thousand times smaller than normal, and time passes about one hundred times more slowly than it does in reality. At this scale, you can explore how surface tension makes water behave. In a third segment, you're a billion times smaller than normal, and time is slowed by a factor of a trillion. Here, you interact with individual water molecules and see how gravity is no longer noticeable and instead electrical charges attract water molecules to their shadows.

Diffusion
Lead developers: Mine-Control, Eric Siegel (New York Hall of Science), Carl Batt (Cornell University), and David Goodsell (Scripps Institute)
This interactive media piece uses large-scale projection, computer vision, and physics modeling to present the concepts of diffusion, random association, temperature, and concentration by allowing you to "corral" two clusters of small reactant molecules together to form larger molecules.

Illustrated zooms into the nanoscale

Lead developer: Exploratorium
These illustrations "zoom" into three familiar objects: a butterfly's wing, a laptop computer, and a human. As you journey from the human scale down to the nanoscale, you see the components that make up these objects--down to individual atoms. Interpretive text guides you through the landmarks at each scale, such as a red blood cell or an oxygen atom, and highlight larger themes about the nanoscale and how research is being applied.