I have been away for a while. Got through the semester, I had a nice break and I am well into the second semester. I will try to finish the last first semester course material and get started on the second nanoscience course. Yesterday we had 26 local high school (grades 9-12) and middle school (grades 6-8) teachers attend a workshop on our campus. The teachers were brought into CVTC's class 100 clean room where they processed silicon wafers using photolithography to transfer a pattern of our school/department logo into a 500 nm aluminum film.

In the last section of the first semester course I cover a variety of topics. Students are required to give a presentation on a nanoscience topic of their choice. The give a oral presentation which usually uses Powerpoint and the have to turn in a written report. The rubric I use for the report is provided here to give you an idea of what I expect:
fn1_final_report_rubric.doc

Following is a list of some of the topics that the students selected this year:

Nanotechnology Energy Options
Lab-on-a-Chip
Environmental Impacts of Nanotechnology
Nanoscience Intellectual Property
Investing in Nanoscience
Nanofabric
Nanoscience and Photovotaic Cells