Nano Fun

Well, I was going to talk about some of the exciting things I was learning this semester, right?... if I had the time. Well, I guess it is obvious now that the time eluded me. In fact, all time eluded me, as well as much sleep. But, now that the relentless pace of school is over for the present, I can look back on a few interesting things that occurred.

One class I took this semester was called Nanotechnology and Science Policy, taught by one of my new favorite professors, Dr. Gary DeBoer. This class was just supposed to be a 1 hour seminar, but the workload made it feel more like a 3 hour class throughout much of the semester. A couple of the perks of this class, though, were the two field trips we took.

The first of the excursions began at 4:00am on the Wednesday after Spring Break. We boarded a bus and took a 5 hour drive to Houston. Our first stop was the NASA Johnson Space Center. On the JSC campus, we were guided by a couple materials scientists, one of which had worked with Dr. DeBoer at NASA doing carbon nanotube research. We were shown various, materials, metallurgical, and chemical laboratories as well as some tourism interests, such as the mockup of the international space station (which is used for training astronauts) and a Saturn V rocket. I must say one of the highlights was picking up 1600 deg F space shuttle tile material in our bare hands

The second stop of our first trip was Rice University. This visit gave a taste of the work of graduate level research in the hard sciences, and the picture was definitely attractive to me. We were shown around the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and presented a lot of information about the nano-work done there at Rice. We also got to see several labs and talk with scientists who discussed their work, showing us what they did. The campus in the center of Houston was beautiful and definitely more inviting than LeTourneau's. The field trip to Houston was a long day--almost 20 hours--but it was fun.

The second field trip took us to Dallas, where we visited the University of Texas at Dallas. They have a large nanotechnology wing, much broader than Rice's. Among their advantages, they also boasted a highest level clean room for chip fabrication. The research done at UT Dallas in nanotechnology was a little more interesting to me as it was largely associated with the field of Electrical Engineering, while much of Rice's focus was in the Biomedical field. It was a neat experience also to meet in person and talk to one of the major authors of a peer-reviewed work that had been handed out in our Nanotechnology class earlier in the semester. I guess you could say that the field trips brought the class full circle.

I am definitely glad I decided to do this whole honors thing.