Public lecture focuses on moving from nanoworld to real world Leigh Smith, an active researcher in nanoscience for over a decade, will give a public lecture Thursday, June 7, at 8 p.m., 138 Abbott Hall. The title is "From the Nanoworld to the Real World: Using Nanoscience to Teach." Dr. Smith has received the Distinguished Teaching award from the University of Cincinnati and is currently funded by the National Science Foundation to develop methods to teach nanoscience to undergraduate students. The very new, and very interdisciplinary field of nanoscience attempts to synthesize new structures on the scale of a nanometer (1/100,000 the width of a human hair). For the first time humans are building man-made structures on the same size scale as the internal workings of cells or viruses. At such length scales, the properties of everyday materials can become excitingly different, opening vast new opportunities for scientists and engineers to create new technologies which could better the human condition. The emergence of this new field has been compared to the major paradigm shifts which occurred in the past during scientific revolutions. For the teacher, examples from current nanoscale research and technologies provide many opportunities for teaching students and the public about the nature of quantum mechanics, light, materials and the natural progression of scientific revolutions. -- Juana Moreno, Assistant Professor, Physics, juana.moreno@und.edu, 777-3517