March 31: Nano Days

My first task as a Nano Days volunteer was to play a game of Nano iSpy with kids as they stopped at our table.  We would find conventional item that they encounter daily and try to relay the significance of that item on the nanoscale.  We learned that Blue Morpho Butterfly is actually more gold on the nanoscale and its blue color comes from the light, not pigment in the butterfly itself.  We also found a picture of DNA and I explained that it was responsible for the differences between the red hair of a little boy and the blonde hair of his younger sister.  Overall, the kids seemed fascinated by the information, and though the concept of a ‘nanoscale’ may not have become completely tangible to them, and I’m not sure that it is for me either, it is now at least fathomable. 

After the iSpy table, I was rotated to the Buckey Ball table where I helped kids assemble Buckey Ball structures out of colored paper.  There, I again tried to illustrate what it means to be at the nanoscale.  In reply to my statement that the same carbon that makes her Coke fizzy makes up much of her body as well the tiny Bucky Balls, a little girl gasped, astonished to learn the connection between things that to her seem mutually exclusive.  I think the best part of working with children is watching them learn and process the information I gave them.  I can’t imagine a feeling being more satisfying than the fulfillment one gets from learning aside from maybe being the person who made that feeling arise in someone else.