Symposium

On Friday, we attended a symposium where we listened to teachers that were part of previous RET's.
Symposium started with Dr. Russell welcoming us and explaining the purpose of the program. It will help us get students excited about science and hopefully in polymers and material science.

The presentations were very interesting. It showed how much research the teachers accomplished. The presentations showed that the teachers were very excited about their experiences and how much they learned during their summers. It looked like the teachers for this year, including myself, felt more comfortable with what we will be doing and excited about the instruments we will learn how to use.

Personally, my group, Sabra, David and myself, were told what we will be working on. It is cutting edge research in dealing with thin films. Not sure how much I can say but I found something on the web by the people doing the research so I can mention that much :-). We will be working with them, Jiangshui Huang, Dr. Menon and Dr. Russell, so it makes it very exciting. Dr. Russell is the Professor in charge of our research group.

In the afternoon, we were shown some of the programs available for teachers to use at their schools to combine science with art.

VISUAL - images obtained by researchers for polymers in the course of their studies, are framed along with a description of the image in plain English

Poly-Merge - using pictures from VISUAL, allow art students to draw their interpretations of the microscopic pictures of the polymers. These artistic intepretations have been shown at science fairs.

Second Day

Won't use the Day titles anymore after this. In case I forget to post.

Anyways, lots of great stuff today. Dr. Dabkowski showed us a PowerPoint and a lot of interesting demos, with polymers, along with some videos. After each demo, Dr. Dabkowski gave us the materials to perform the experiments. They were very interesting and he explained what was happening. This was exciting since I had performed some of these experiments before but had not been sure about the processes

List of some of the experiments:
Polyvinyl alcohol with sodium borate (use Borax)
Elmer's glue and sodium borate
Using Velcro to show cross-linking within polymers
Using inside of diaper (unused) to show hydrophilic polymers
Affect of salt on water absorption by polymer - polyacrylic acid
Another hydrophilic polymer, Polysnow
Video showing flame resistant polymer (full of water)
Hydrophobic polymer used to absorb oil and floats on water
Silly putty
Rubber balloon-stretch to form crystals-exothermic, feel on upper lip
Use liquid nitrogen to change properties of polymers

Toured facilities at Conte Center, it is an awesome place, and saw available instrumentation. It is quite a bit so will just set up link to instrumentation. Can't wait til I start the research!!

I will warn you. I am not an English major so forgive any spelling mistakes and simplistic dialogue. :-) Sorry.

First Day

Lots of paperwork!! But its just one of those things you must push through :-)

Otherwise, like in any lab setting, we, the other teachers accepted into the program and myself, had to go through lab safety training. Just goes to show you that you must always keep up to date to make sure you are in a safe environment. Also watched an interesting video on the history of plastics. Lots of fascinating facts about plastics.

Thanks Dr. Dabkowski for all the help and encouragement.

UMass Research at Conte Center

This week marks my first days at The Silvio O Conte National Center for Polymer Research.



I was accepted into the Research Experiences for Teachers program along with nine other teachers; eight teachers are from Massachusetts, one from New York and myself from Texas. We are able to attend this program due to sponsorship by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). I will try to update as often as possible.

The Conte Center is located on the campus of UMass and I am staying at the dorms.