Public Engagement in Nanotechnology
the Queen on a Diamond
In April 2012, just before the Easter weekend, the NNNC were visited by filmmaker Brady Haran with an idea for the award-winning Periodic Videos series. They had a spare industrial diamond (donated by Chemistry - taken from a broken instrument mount, and thus now unusable for its intended purpose) - and the Queen's diamond jubilee was approaching - could you etch an image of the Queen on the diamond?
The answer was yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wm2YtvNmPxQ
More pictures on Brady Haran's Periodic Videos Blog
The engraved diamond has been featured on BBC East Midlands News.
Ockbrook School students visit the NNNC
In late 2011, two students from Ockbrook School contacted the NNNC to ask if it was possible for them to have some samples looked at as part of a science project. One of the students describes their visit:
On Friday 2nd December 2011 myself and another student from Ockbrook School visited the Nanoscience Department at Nottingham University to use the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM machine) for our CREST Award.
For those who do not know, a Crest Award is a science- based qualification, where students must come up with a task title, research the task and fulfil the question. For our award, we came up with the task, “Do hairs of different ethnicity react differently to hair products?”
In our experiments, we took several hairs from our own heads (my own hair is Caucasian and my partner’s hair is Asian), and then placed them in sample bottles for one week in 10cm3 solutions of shampoo, hairspray, straightening serum, strengthening serum and our control, air. We sealed each of these for one week, and we found that they did not look any different to the naked eye, so we thought: “Do they look different under the microscope?” After interrogating our science teachers, we found the only way we could see the hair in enough detail would be under an SEM machine, and our school obviously did not budget for multi-million pounds worth of microscope. That is where the University comes in:
My partner and I contacted Dr. Milligan to ask if we could send the samples in to be viewed under the SEM machine, and a wonderful reply landed in my e-mail Inbox- “Would you like to come and do it yourselves?” We accepted and we were on our way!
In the Nanotechnology Centre, we met with Dr. Milligan and Dr. Parmenter, and we were taught about microns and nanometres. We then prepared our samples by pressing a centimetre long sample of our hair onto studs, which were then pressed into the disc inside the SEM machine. Pressing hairs of 0.05 mm in width onto a stud was tricky, but we managed and we went downstairs. We were allowed to see our hair, which to be quite frank, looked fairly grotesque, at a 1000x zoom!
Unfortunately, we were unable to play with the “Big Gun” microscope, as it was worth millions of pounds, and would take days to fix and reset if we pressed the wrong button. We were able to take away over 200images of our hair, and we were even able to leave one of our teacher’s hairs with the centre to later mill our school emblem onto the surface with an ion beam!
So the answer to our question is “Yes”: Hair products affect hairs of different ethnicity. Asian hair reacts well to shampoo and hairspray, whereas Caucasian hair reacts better to straightening serum. Neither ethnicity hairs reacted well with strengthening serum, as it stripped the protective coating off the hair.
We would like to thank Dr. Milligan, Dr Parmenter and the rest of the Nanotechnology Centre for allowing us to visit, and for spending valuable time teaching us how to use the microscope and about nanometres and microns, which has already proved useful in understanding topics mentioned in our lessons and even on the news!
NNNC on Twitter
The NNNC now has a Twitter account, which we'll use to link to anything nano that we think people might be intersted in.
Sixty Symbols and Periodic Videos
The Electron Microscopes have contributed to some of film-maker Brady Harans videos - see
Writing on a snowflake
The World's Smallest Periodic Table
Gold Nanoparticles
NanoWhat?
Following on from Nano in Nottingham in 2007, the NanoWhat? East Midlands Nanotechnology Roadshow , coordinated by the University of Nottingham with the help of local partners including the other seven Universities in the East Midlands (Loughborough, Nottingham Trent, Leicester, De Montfort, Derby and Lincoln), had thousands of visitors in the shows at Nottingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Derby, Lincoln and a schools event at Rockingham Festival 2008.
The NanoWhat? Totally Tiny Technology video collected the 'Best Corporate/Non-Broadcast Programme' at the annual Royal Television Society Awards 2008. Produced for The University of Nottingham and East Midlands Development Agency by VPoint.TV, it brought the fascinating world of nanotechnology to the public, and was shown to 24,000 people at the NanoWhat? roadshows across the region.
Professor Clive Roberts, Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology and Director of the Nottingham Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Centre at The University of Nottingham, said: "We'd like to congratulate VPoint.TV on the award. The University has been really delighted at the success of the film, which has made a difficult science accessible to the general public. It's had a huge impact, and we've had nothing but positive feedback."
The film is available to download from the NanoWhat? website .