CCI researchers at both UT-Austin and Columbia participate in activities designed to engage the public in fundamental polymer chemistry concepts.
At UT-Austin, CCI graduate students host “Nano Goes Long (and Squishy): Hands-On Polymer Science,” an event held in conjunction with UT-Austin’s annual public open house, Explore UT. These hands-on polymer experiments include “Snow in Texas” (sodium polyacrylate + water) and “Polymer Nanostamps,” a demo in which guests use polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) molds to create stamps with microscopic features and also used laser pointers to diffract light through 1-D and 2-D diffraction gratings produced by soft lithography with PDMS. Explore UT attracts more than 50,000 visitors to the UT-Austin campus each year, and more than 500 children (grades pre-K-12) and their parents participated in our polymer chemistry activities.
Former CCI postdoc (now Assistant Professor) Kyle Plunkett helps elementary school children prepare their own polymers during Columbia's annual Holiday Science Celebration.
At Columbia, CCI Site Director Colin Nuckolls introduced polymer chemistry activities to Columbia’s annual Holiday Science Celebration, an event targeted at local K-8th grade students, 50% of whom are from the Morningside Heights/Harlem neighborhood of NYC. This program was originally pioneered in part by Nuckolls and has attracted ~300 students and parents each of the three years that is has been held. The polymer chemistry activities included in this year’s Holiday Science Celebration were a polyurethane foam demo and “Snow in NYC” formed from a mixture of sodium polyacrylate and water.
CCI Co-PI Kallie Willets also hosted a high school chemistry teacher in her lab during the summer of 2010. The high school teacher, who is pursuing a Masters degree in chemistry education as part of UT-Austin’s UTeach program, worked with a CCI undergraduate fellow to grow various oligothiophene single crystals by means of vapor diffusion, which were examined by correlated Raman/X-ray crystallography measurements under Project 3 in the CCI. Willets will continue to host other high school science teachers pursuing Masters’ degrees in her lab in subsequent summers. By involving these high school teachers in CCI research, the themes of the CCI can be translated to a broad high school chemistry audience.
