Cutting-Edge and Cross-Cutting: Connecting the Dots betweenNanotechnology and High School ChemistryGregory T. Rushton*,† and Brett A. Criswell‡

†Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia 30144, United States‡Department of Middle-Secondary and Instructional Technology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, United States

ABSTRACT: This editorial suggests opportunities for celebrating this year’s NationalChemistry Week theme of nanotechnology by incorporating ideas from consumer productsand technological materials to address two issues often faced by the precollege teachingcommunity in their classes. First, the relevance of introductory chemistry topics to students’lives is considered, then how cross-cutting concepts that connect chemistry to other disciplinescan be facilitated through this year’s National Chemistry Week theme.

KEYWORDS: High School/Introductory Chemistry, Curriculum, Nanotechnology

In the summer of 2004, I (Brett) had a unique experiencethat continues to influence my teachingof both chemistry

and future chemistry educatorsto this day. I had theopportunity to participate in a weeklong workshop titled AnIntroduction to Nanotechnology hosted by the Center forNanotechnology Education and Utilization at Penn StateUniversity (CNEU).1 The workshop was unique for me intwo ways: (i) instead of learning about science that had beenknown for a long time, I was learning about science that was atthe frontier of research; and (ii) instead of attending it bymyself, I attended with a colleague (a high school physicsteacher). By the time the workshop was over, I was hooked: Iwanted to find every opportunity that I could to bring ideasrelated to nanotechnology into my classroom. I spent the nextseveral years working with the CNEU staff to develop thecurricular materials to realize that vision. This effort involvedobtaining a grant from the Toshiba America Foundation,2

completing a summer educational internship at the CNEU, andworking with colleaguesall in a focused effort to help as manystudents as possible feel the same excitement about nano-technology as I did.Flash forward eight years and I am feeling some of the same

excitement that I experienced back in the summer of 2004,because National Chemistry Week (NCW) is here and thetheme this year is Nanotechnology: The Smallest BIG Idea inScience.3 To help you prepare for this week and to considerways in which you might convey the beauty, challenges, andtriumphs of this fast-developing field with your students, Gregand I wanted to share what came out of our conversation aboutwhat it was that had caused me to get “hooked” onnanotechnology. Through that discussion, we realized thatinfusing nanotechnology examples and ideas into the

curriculum makes it possible to address two of the issues weboth constantly faced as high school chemistry teachers: (i)making our content relevant and engaging to students; and (ii)finding ways to draw connectionsnot just between differentchemistry concepts, but between concepts in chemistry andthose in biology, earth science, and physics.With regards to the first issue, as was noted in the opening

paragraph, the CNEU workshop was different from manyprofessional development opportunities available to scienceteachers in exposing those participating to cutting-edge science.Bringing nanotechnology into the chemistry classroom can helpour students move beyond what happened yesterday (or manyyesterdays ago) in science, to what is happening today and whatmight happen tomorrow. Searching online sources such asScienceDaily News4 or LiveScience,5 one quickly becomesaware of the almost-daily breakthroughs that are taking place innanotechnology. And those breakthroughs can often be used inthe engage or elaborate portions of a 5 E learning cycle6 tomake students aware of the excitement and applicability of thecontent they are studying. For instance, an article that appearedin Science Daily News in July 2012, titled “Entropy Can Leadto Order, Paving the Route to Nanostructures”7 could be usedto help elaborate on students’ understanding of the coreconcept of entropy, while at the same time letting them knowhow advanced materials of the future might be made.Using nanotechnology to make chemistry relevant and

engaging and accessible does not have to be confined tohaving students passively read about the experiments beingdone in this field; it can also involve having them experiment inthis area themselves. Several articles have been published in the

Published: September 11, 2012

Editorial

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Journal that describe investigations in which students eitherprepare or study the properties of gold,8 silver,9 and ironoxide10 nanoparticles. Another article introduces students tothe principle of nanoencapsulation, while at the same timeallowing them to explore the concept of weak and strong acidsand bases.11 Science supply companies have begun to supportteaching these ideas by developing inexpensive kits based onthese investigations.12 In this month’s (October 2012) issue ofthe Journal, there are several other articles that discuss thepreparation and characterization of nanomaterials that suggestother ideas about how to incorporate nanochemistry ideas inyour curriculum.8,13−16

When considering how to connect the teaching of nano-technology in precollege classrooms to other disciplines, it isunderstandable to view it as something else to add to thelaundry list of concepts that you are expected to cover in thecurriculumperhaps an impediment to the coverage of thecontent that your students will be tested upon. Within all of ourscience courses, however, there are common themes (Bench-marks for Science Literacy),17 unifying concepts (NationalScience Education Standards),18 or cross-cutting concepts (AFramework for K−12 Science Education)19whatever labelyou want to apply to themthat enable us to support ourstudents in learning more science while we teach less materialbecause broader and deeper knowledge structures can be builtoff of these foundational principles. A curriculum infused withideas and activities related to nanotechnology can allow you toexplore these cross-cutting concepts in innovative and mean-ingful ways. Take for instance the notion of scale, proportion,and quantity, a cross-cutting concept in the new frameworks.19

It is well established that chemistry students struggle with thetransition from the macroscopic to the microscopic and thetranslation back and forth between the two realms.20 Thattransition can be made more accessible by stopping at thenanoscale for a little while on the journey from the visible tothe particulate to truly think about what new understandingscan be obtained by looking at phenomena at a different scale.Discussions could be started about why it is that nanoparticlesof wax create a more even coating on our cars or whynanoparticles of zinc oxide produce a clear sunscreen asopposed to an unappealing milky white suspension.21 We couldalso connect our content with that of our colleagues teachingbiology11 (or physics or earth science) with a conversationabout micro- versus nanoencapsulation. (See Figure 1.) One ofthe advantages of nanoencapsulated drugs (as opposed tomicroencapsulated versions) is that these formulations containactive ingredients that are of the same size scale as thebiological entities the drugs are targeting: viruses.22

Because biology teachers focus on examining the relationshipbetween the Framework’s structure and function, we could givesignificant attention to the relationship between structure andproperties. We could make explicit the link between biology’soverarching concern with structure and function andchemistry’s frequent consideration of structure and propertiesusing nanotechnology examples that students encounteroutside of school. Biology teachers might talk about how thefunction of proteins might be controlled through nano-technology22 and chemistry teachers might examine how theproperties of graphene might make it ideal for creating digitaltransistors. Moreover, for chemistry teachers, ideas fromnanotechnology could provide a way to introduce theirstudents to unique ways in which the concepts of scale(size), structure, and properties intersect. For instance, gold is

gold colored at a macroscopic scale; at the nanoscale, gold canbe various colors, depending on the size of the particles.8 Asone source has suggested, advances in nanotechnology can be“likened to an expansion of the entire periodic table of theelements into another dimension”.23

We hope you will be able to include this year’s NCW themein your classroom in productive and meaningful ways for yourstudents this year. For additional resources, visit JCE’s thematiccollection of nano-related articles for NCW 2012.24 Yourfeedback and experiences are valuable; we hope you will sharethem with us by leaving a comment at Greg’s blog post25 at theJCE Chemical Education Xchange Web site.

■ AUTHOR INFORMATIONCorresponding Author

*E-mail: grushton@jce.acs.org.Notes

Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors andnot necessarily the views of the ACS.

■ REFERENCES(1) Center for Nanotechnology Education and Utilization Web page.http://www.cneu.psu.edu/ (accessed Aug 2012).(2) Toshiba America Foundation Web page. http://www.toshiba.com/taf/ (accessed Aug 2012).

Figure 1. Sequences mimicking the process of nanoencapsulation thatstudents initiate in an activity using an antacid formulation. Adaptedfrom the Supporting Information of the article “Connecting Acids andBases with Encapsulation...and Chemistry with Nanotechnology”; seeref 11.

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(3) American Chemical Society National Chemistry Week 2012 Webpage. http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_TRANSITIONMAIN&node_id=1033&use_sec=false&sec_url_var=region1 (accessed Aug 2012).(4) Science Daily News Web page. http://www.sciencedaily.com/(accessed Aug 2012).(5) LiveScience Web page. http://www.livescience.com/ (accessedAug 2012).(6) Thier, H.; Karplus, R.; Lawson, C.; Knoll, R.; Montgomery, M.Science Curriculum Improvement Study; Rand McNally: Chicago, IL,1970.(7) University of Michigan. Entropy Can Lead to Order, Paving theRoute to Nanostructures. ScienceDaily, 26 July 2012. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726142200.htm (accessedAug 2012).(8) Sharma, R. K.; Gulati, S.; Mehta, S. Preparation of GoldNanoparticles Using Tea: A Green Chemistry Experiment. J. Chem.Educ. 2012; DOI: 10.1021/ed2002175.(9) Solomon, S. D.; Bahadory, M.; Jeyarajasingam, A. V.; Rutkowsky,S. A.; Boritz, C.; Mulfinger, L. Synthesis and Study of SilverNanoparticles. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 322−325.(10) Van Dorn, D.; Ravalli, M. T.; Small, M. M.; Hillery, B.;Andreescu, S. Adsorption of Arsenic by Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: AVersatile, Inquiry-Based Laboratory for a High School or CollegeScience Course. J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88, 1119−1122.(11) Criswell, B. Connecting Acids and Bases with Encapsulatio-n...and Chemistry with Nanotechnology. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84,1136−1139.(12) For instance, Flinn Scientific, at http://www.flinnsci.com/(accessed Aug 2012), sells kits for preparing and studying gold (Ruby-Red Colloidal Gold Nanotechnology Demonstration Kit; AP 7117;$;31.65) and silver (“Golden” Silver Nanoparticles; AP 7483; $;19.15)nanoparticles. Additionally, they sell a kit based on the micro-encapsulation article (Modeling NanotechnologyEncapsulation bySodium Alginate; AP 7361; $;30.05).(13) Campbell, D. J.; Villarreal, R. B.; Fitzjarrald, T. J. Take-HomeNanochemistry: Fabrication of a Gold- or Silver-Containing WindowCling. J. Chem. Educ. 2012; DOI: 10.1021/ed200466k.(14) Campbell, D. J.; Andrews, M. J.; Stevenson, K. J. New Nanotechfrom an Ancient Material: Chemistry Demonstrations InvolvingCarbon-Based Soot. J. Chem. Educ. 2012; DOI: 10.1021/ed300087t.(15) Zhang, R.; Liu, S.; Yuan, H.; Xiao, D.; Choi, M. M. F. NanosizedTiO2 for Photocatalytic Water Splitting Studied by Oxygen Sensor andData Logger. J. Chem. Educ. 2012; DOI: 10.1021/ed1009283.(16) Journal of Nano Education Home Page. http://www.aspbs.com/jne/ (accessed Aug 2012).(17) American Association for the Advancement of Science.Benchmarks for Science Literacy; Oxford University Press: New York,1993.(18) National Research Council. National Science Education Stand-ards; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 1996.(19) National Research Council. A Framework for K−12 ScienceEducation; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2012.(20) Russell, J. W.; Kozma, R. B.; Jones, T.; Wykoff, J.; Marx, N.;Davis, J. Use of Simultaneous-Synchronized Macroscopic, Micro-scopic, and Symbolic Representations To Enhance the Teaching andLearning of Chemical Concepts. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 330−334.(21) Dunnivant, F. M. An Integrated Limnology, Microbiology, andChemistry Exercise for Teaching Summer Lake Stratification, NutrientConsumption, and Chemical Thermodynamics. Am. Biol. Teach. 2006,68, 424−427.(22) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Controlling Protein Functionwith Nanotechnology. ScienceDaily, 22 February 2012. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120222154635.htm (accessedAug 2012).(23) Drexler, K. E. The Nanotechnology Age Web Page. http://www.thenanoage.com/ (accessed Aug 2012).(24) ACS Virtual Collections (Scroll down for the J. Chem. Educ.).http://pubs.acs.org/page/pr/thematic.html (accessed Aug 2012).

(25) JCE Chemical Education Xchange Home Page. http://www.chemedx.org/blog/cutting-edge-and-cross-cutting-connecting-dots-between-nanotechnology-and-high-school-chemistry (accessed Aug2012).

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