Highlights

The list of potential curricular connections and activities that can be done with a wind tunnel in middle school is almost endless. This project incorporates simple geometry, weather, lab skills, metric measurement, as well as having the students work through the design process and actually construct and test their creations. The project bridges math and science wonderfully with real world applications that the students can get excited about and really understand. The interactive approach of this project can not help but enhance a student’s learning.

Sn whiskers are a serious reliability problem in Pb-free electronics manufacturing.  Whiskers (as in fig. 1) grow out of pure Sn coatings and have been responsible for numerous system failures, such as the Galaxy IV satellite. To increase our understanding of whisker growth, we have performed systematic measurements to quantify the whisker growth kinetics and the correlation between the formation of a Sn-Cu intermetallic compound (IMC), stress in the Sn and whisker nucleation.

 Graphene, an atomic layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, is actively being pursued as a material for next-generation electronics because of the high mobility of charge carriers and the potential to control their density by applying a gate voltage.

Dozens of excited middle and high school students from across Santa Barbara County spent a morning learning about alternative energy by building and racing their own solar cars. The workshop, presented as part of Science and Technology Day at UCSB, included a presentation on alternative energy, hands-on activities, and a corresponding video for teachers. This workshop was developed by graduate students in collaboration with education staff from the UCSB Materials Research Laboratory.

Initiative provides access to analytical instrumentation instruction to Minority Serving and Primarily Undergraduate Institutions through 4 types of virtual experiences:  1) User institution selects technique and class can access manuals, laboratories, and view training videos at http://www.mrfn.org 2) Live sessions through Skype featuring MRFN scientist explaining theory and manipulating instruments 3) Real time sample analysis in which students dictate instrument parameters and 4) Real time question and answer dialogue featuri

Mussel-inspired adhesion has much to teach about the chemistry and processing of polymers and provides a glimpse of some remarkable physical properties exhibited by this complex fluid. . Mussel adhesive processing has been mimicked by Waite, Tirrell and Israelachvili mixing a recombinant mussel adhesive protein (MAP) with hyaluronic acid (HA) to form a fluid coacervate. Significantly, these unique materials were shown to be shear-thinning,

The Renewable Energy MRSEC at the Colorado School of Mines held a ten week Research Experiences for Undergraduates program on renewable energy in which over half of the 20 students were women.

The Renewable Energy MRSEC at the Colorado School of Mines in collaboration with the outreach division at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory held a two week workshop for math and science teachers from public school catering to under-represented minorities.  The teachers were given hands-on experiences for projects in renewable energy to incorporate into their lesson plans.  

Silicon nanoparticles are promising new materials for photovoltaic applications that combine materials property tunability on the nanoscale with silicon’s established performance in photovoltaics. We have succeeded in synthesizing crystalline silicon nanoparticles in a continuous flow plasma reactor and established control over particle size. By carefully tuning the plasma parameters, we have synthesized particles with radial precision of a couple atomic layers and characterized them structurally and optically.