REU/RET Projects

Ken Bowles
School: Apopka High School
Mentor in UCF: Dr. Sudipta Seal – AMPAC, and Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering

Teaching Nanotechnology in the High School Curriculum: A Teacher’s Guide

Nanotechnology, from a business perspective, will create better and entirely new materials, devices, and systems. What does this mean? It means new jobs due to new markets. It is amazing that the science of small will have a HUGE impact in society. In fact, it is projected that by the year 2010, the demand for nanotechnology products and services in the U.S. alone will hit the $1 trillion dollar amount. Funding for nanotechnology research has nearly doubled each year as the U.S. invested $710 million dollars in research in 2003. So what exactly are these research dollars being spent on? Nanotechnology applications can be summarized into several basic areas: Smart Materials, Sensors, Nanoscale Biostructures, Energy Capture and Storage, Magnets, Fabrication, Electronics, and Modeling.