Broader Impact Goals: 1) Increased participation of underrepresented students in STEM, 2) enhanced student knowledge retention, and 3) improved STEM educational system.
The two modules, 1) “Extracting Fat From Food” and 2) “Paper Nanotechnology” are intended for high school students that will last approximately 1.5-2hrs.
The first module, set in a lab setting, has the students determine the fat content in snacking foods that they regularly consume. The type of food tested can include any commonly eaten snack food that pertains to the student’s life (e.g. french fries, potato chips, tortilla chips, popcorn, etc.). By relating the content to their daily lives, they are more intrigued and this will encourage them to think outside of the box when applying the learned content to other situations. This group activity gives the students exposure to a research lab setting with lab techniques, introduces the relationship between solvent polarity and solubility, quantitative analysis of data, and allows for scientific communication when the students share their findings with one another.
The second module is set in a classroom and exposes the students to concepts of how different configurations of atoms within a molecule can drastically alter their physical and chemical properties. As nanotechnology is a more modern concept that high-school students are very familiar with, their enthusiasm to understand how the rearrangement of atoms can result in the design of electronics is piqued.
The following document below explains the broader impacts that each of the modules incorporate and explains further details of each module. The links below will lead you to pages of downloadable content for each module: PowerPoint presentations, procedures, worksheets, and evaluations.
Extracting Fat From Food Module Materials
https://chemimpacts.uoregon.edu/2019/10/13/extracting-fat-from-food-module-materials/
Paper Nanotechnology Module Materials
https://chemimpacts.uoregon.edu/2019/10/13/paper-nanotechnology-module-materials/
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