UVA Virtual Lab: Nanoscience Class - Syllabus
 

Syllabus for ENGR-250:

The intent of this course is to provide a hands-on introduction to world of nanoscience for 1 st and 2 nd year UVA students from across the university (i.e. students with and without Science and Engineering majors). The class will have two distinguishing characteristics. First, the class’s central theme is that nanoscience marks a fundamental transition from a world largely explained by intuitive Newtonian laws, to a much stranger world governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. It is not simply about scaling objects down to the nanometer scale. Nor is it a straight-forward extrapolation of present day microelectronic and microfabrication techniques. Instead, nanoscience is where smallness itself unexpectedly leads to new physical characteristics, to new opportunities for application, to new challenges and possible hazards. Second, the class is distinguished by its use of hands-on student labs made possible by new miniaturized instrumentation. This includes pocket-sized scanning tunneling microscopes and atomic force microscopes. Students will learn about the operation of such tools through virtual reality recreations and then proceed into the lab in small student teams to conduct personalized experiments synthesizing and evaluating nanostructures. Structures will span the full range from inorganic materials, to organic molecules, to those based on DNA assembly. Subjects to be covered include:

  1. Nanoscience fact or fiction? An exploration of nanoscience in the popular literature and an examination of the scientific basis (or lack thereof) for projected claims and fears. (readings, essays and class discussions – 1 week)
  2. How do we see at the nanoscale? Tools, such as STMs and AFMs, allow us to image objects. Tools, such as optical spectroscopies, allow us to probe size-dependent characteristics. (lectures, readings, virtual reality simulations, and labs – 4 weeks).
  3. How do we build at the nanoscale? The essential role of “self-assembly” processes including those borrowed from cell and molecular biology. (lectures, readings, web material, and labs – 4 weeks)
  4. Research Highlights: What has been done. What is on the horizon. Implications and concerns. (student reports and labs – plus material included in units above - 2 weeks)

Course Objectives:

  1. To recognize that the rules of nanoscience are fundamentally different than those we experience in everyday life. An informed citizen should thus be skeptical of many popular accounts and claims, while recognizing that this is indeed a strange new world we are exploring – a world likely to provide both unexpected rewards and challenges.
  2. To contrast modern microfabrication technology (where humans at least indirectly control assembly) with evolving nanofabrication (where we may depend on self-assembly techniques, many of which may be inspired by or borrowed from biological processes)
  3. To present entering university students, of all majors, with an early hands-on opportunity to use leading-edge research tools and techniques.

Prerequisites: None (although it is assumed that, in high school, students will have completed physics, chemistry and biology/physiology).

Instructors: John C. Bean (Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering), Keith Williams (Dept. of Physics), plus guest lecturers drawn from across the UVA faculty.

Textbooks: None, instead use will be made of:

Popularizations of Nanoscience (e.g. Michael Crichton’s “Prey”)
Excerpts from press converge of Nanoscience
Nanoscience research papers and excerpts
Virtual reality recreations of the lab tools posted on the UVA Virtual lab website
(e.g. www.virlab.virginia.edu/VL/easyScan_STM.htm & www.virlab.virginia.edu/VLeasyScan_AFM.htm)

Weekly Meetings: One hour common lecture/discussion meeting + two labs sections (each two hours)