Out Far, In Deep
by Mark Briggs

Probing the surface of a world one million times smaller than we can see, or observing the center of our galaxy 93 million miles away, Carolina scientists are using technology to bring science into schools and place it into students’ hands. By all accounts, the students are learning something. And so are the scientists.

Rich Superfine, Gail Jones, and Russ Taylor helped Hillsborough high school students access an atomic force microscope through the nanoManipulator. The SOLAR program led by Wayne Christiansen debuted this spring in classrooms across the state, allowing students to use the telescope in the Morehead Observatory. In both cases, telecommunications technologies allow high school and middle school students access to expensive, unique equipment on Carolina’s campus without ever setting foot in Chapel Hill.

Moving a virus

“We went to the lab and played with a virus. I talked to a man from UNC-CH. It was so cool! It made me want to be a scientist because it was so fun.”

Mike Byrd is a student at Orange High School in Hillsborough. He wrote those comments following a visit by a group of Carolina scientists, professors, and graduate students. During the three-day program, students used nanotechnologies developed at UNC-CH to explore and manipulate actual viruses under an atomic force microscope in a lab back on the Chapel Hill campus.

Jones, professor of education at Carolina, has supervised the two visits to Orange High—one in the spring of 1998, and a second one in December 1999—spending as much as six weeks at the high school to orchestrate the visiting science investigation.

“I can say for sure from both of these studies that students are developing a more three-dimensional conceptualization of viruses,” Jones says. “Before they viewed viruses as flat, just an outline, with no real understanding of the morphology of a virus.”

The nanoManipulator has moved students by allowing them to move viruses.

“In the course of a week, I have learned so much,” Orange High student Lisa Punt wrote of the experience. “Coming into this experiment we knew so little about viruses, and now we can describe their size, some of their characteristics, and how viruses infect you and make you sick. The visiting scientists have inspired me and so many others to join a field in science. They have lit a flame that cannot be put out.”

During the last visit, students rotated between three stations, including one where they interviewed the scientists and had the chance to ask anything, personal or professional. But one station clearly stood out: using the nanoManipulator. Becoming one of only a few hundred people to use the technology caught each student’s attention, but the ability to push, poke, and feel an adenovirus is what kept it. Communicating with graduate student Garrett Matthews in the nanotechnology lab in Chapel Hill through videoconferencing, Superfine and Taylor instructed the Orange High students about the nanoManipulator, about adenoviruses and, more importantly, about science. Superfine is an associate professor of physics and astronomy; Taylor is a research assistant professor of computer science.

“It was shocking, but we asked them if they ever had a scientist come out to their class—ever—and they said no,” Jones says. “They have significantly changed their views of science and scientists and their attitude about what science is. They said, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that physicists and computer scientists work with people in education and biology. This is really interesting, this is really cutting edge. It’s not boring at all.’”

Superfine, who admits that attracting students to the science program at Carolina is one of his selfish motives, will don an outrageous tie-dyed shirt and cart along movie posters from 1950s horror flicks to illustrate the science. Explaining the issues of scale needed to experiment with something as small as viruses, Superfine points to an old movie in which a giant ant terrorizes a city.

It’s a matter of connection. The Carolina professors hope to connect the high school students to the technology, to the field of study, and to the idea of science as a career.

“If you ask them why does an artist do what they do, they would probably say because an artist wants to do it,” Superfine says. “But I don’t think they viewed science as an activity motivated by passion, as having the same motivation.”

“We did a lot of ‘hands-on’ activities,” Raven Munkres wrote. “I think that really helped us to comprehend all of the information given to us. I enjoyed my experience learning about viruses. It opened my mind to a possible new path to a career as a scientist and gave me a definite new outlook on viruses.”

> NEXT PAGE: Sky-high

© Copyright 2000 Endeavors magazine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

What do you think of this story?
Let us know.