posted: 02/03/2020
Saturday, February 1st, 2020 saw the 10th annual Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day, a day-long festival hosted by Drexel University Materials Science department and the Penn MRSEC. This event has been held annually since 2011 with an average annual attendance of 900+ people. This year, volunteers taught Materials Science concepts to elementary and middle school-aged students and their families with hands on demonstrations and workshops. For example, MEAM professor, Jordan Raney, demonstrated the utility of instability while PhD candidate Daniel Rosen, from Chris Murray’s MSE lab, illustrated the super-elastic phenomena of shape-memory alloy using a coil of NiTinol. Nearly half of the Philly Materials Day demo tables were staffed by 70+ graduate students, undergraduate students, and faculty from 15 LRSM-affiliated groups.
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Other demonstrations included:
- Origami and Kirigami (Shu Yang, MSE)
- Tribology: principles of friction, wear and lubrication (Robert Carpick, MSE)
- Smart Fluorescent Molecules for Studying Brain Diseases (E. James Petersson, Chemistry)
- Shrinky Dink Polymers (Karen Winey and Russ Composto, MSE)
- The surprising behavior of soft matter (Arjun Yodh, Physics)
- Chemistry and Optics (Zahra Fakhraai, Chemistry)
- Light and Color: From Molecules to LCD Screens (Lee Bassett, ESE)
- Non-Newtonian Fluids (Steve Szewczyk, MSE)
- Understanding Materials with Computer Simulations (Jennifer Lukes, MEAM)
- Think Film Bookmarks, Memory Metals, and Playing with Nanoscale Materials (Chris Murray, MSE)
- The Utility of Instability (Jordan Raney, MEAM)
- Self-organization in Complex Systems (Ekaterina Grishchuk, Physiology)
- Nano-Bio Materials for Next-Generation Disease Monitoring (Alan Johnson, Physics)
- Sticky Materials (Kevin Turner, MEAM)
- High Temperature Superconductivity Levitation (Eric Statch/Deep Jariwala, MSE/ESE)