The basis of my research is electrochemistry and since the students are onto their electricity unit this semester, Dr. Jumper and I thought it would be a good fit to discuss electrochemistry and batteries. This past week I conducted a hands on lab with electrochemical batteries using household items. This was meant to be a very exploratory lab and the students were given some room to do so. I briefly explained how the electrochemical cell works with the chemistry and then they were off to explore in groups of 2 or 3. I had basic household materials for use as an electrolyte (lemon juice, coke, vinegar, and salt water) and zinc, copper, and aluminum metal strips for the two electrodes. The lab was broken into four parts:
1.) Make several different cells with different materials and determine which one produces the most voltage
2.) Take the highest voltage cell and put 2or 3 of them in series
3.) Then in parallel
4.) Light a red LED using any cell combination and set-up
The students really seemed to like this lab and had lots of questions in which they were thinking deeper about it. Some groups finished earlier and they wanted to try different things and they went to town. Some groups wanted to make giant cell to light the LED others wanted to light two or three LEDs and others had several cells mixing and matching metals and electrolytes. It was exciting to see!! They did have some questions to answer as homework and I looking forward to reading their responses and hope they understood what was happening!!
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So, I have officially begun my last semester in the GK-12 Fellowship. Its going to be a busy one between my thesis writing, a few last experiments, and the high school! In terms of my research I have a couple of more electrochemical detection experiments to finish, which I hope to have completed by the end of the month. I also hope to have a draft of a chapter or two of my thesis done as well. I am currently finishing up writing a paper for submission and then I can convert that into a chapter. I will also be going to the American Chemical Society Spring Meeting at the end of March in San Diego to present a poster on my electrochemical detection results 
At the high school the AP Physics C class had started onto electricity and are in full force to get prepared for the AP exam in May. The two honors classes have also started in on electric charge and electric fields as well. Dr. Jumper and I have decided to incorporate my research into these units. The basis of my fabrication is electrochemistry and I will be doing a couple of lessons on it including a lab where the students will make batteries with household materials. This will be a good way to show the students the connection between chemistry and physics! It will also be helpful to be to brush up on the basics of my research
I have finished the fall semester at Lowell High! Students are using Matlab a couple of days a week and I think they are getting the hang of it. I believe that the main issue is that the students have a hard time trying to visualize how the data is set up. For example, excel presents the data in table form and the students can see what they are working with in this giant table. While matlab stores everything in vectors or matrices and it becomes hard for the students to understand how it is represented and how to work with it. When asking the students what they think about Matlab, I get some good feedback…some say its a lot easier to do big sets of calculations and think its a nice program to know. But, they do get frustrated with it…which I can relate to!
I have also given a presentation about my research. I discussed with them the motivation behind it and how I am going about solving a problem. I have shown them lots of images of the particles I fabricate and some of the pieces of equipment that I use, which they seem to like! In the new year I plan on discussing more about my research and nanotechnology with them.
Happy Holidays
PS does anyone know how to upload pictures to a blog?!? I have some pictures of the students using Matlab that I would like to share
Matlab is in full swing in Dr. Jumper’s APC and two honors classes. The students are using for all their weekly labs that happen in the class. They use it 2-3times a week to aid in the analysis of their experiments, usually solving an equation and graphing results. If they do not finish their codes during class time, then they are asked to finish at home on their students versions of Matlab that each student has. Some students have picked it up rather quickly and have excelled in it and others still struggle with some basic routines. I try to stress the importance of using such a computational technique and that if they plan on pursuing STEM fields it will be used in both academia and industry. I had one student tell me that she has put to added it on her college application. And to extend this they can have in on their resumes, which I hope they do!
To help show the students a real world application of Matlab I had my fellow Fellow Blake come visit my APC class. He does research with using neutrons as an medical imaging technique and he brought along with him a lab mate of his, Dan. Dan uses Matlab to take thousands of data points and convert that into an image. He stressed that this is possible to do in excel but when you have 200,000 data points to individually input into excel it becomes time consuming, therefore Matlab is the way to go! Both students did a great job, though we did run out of time and they had to rush through a few things. Blake discussed the background of their work and Dan talked about the Matlab. I believe we might plan for them to come back in the new year to present to Dr. Jumper’s honor’s classes. Their research topic is very interesting and I think we can really grab the students attention
Thank you Blake and Dan for taking time out and visiting the class!
Things this fall have been going well. They students all are catching on to the Matlab and integrating it into many of the labs they do on a weekly basis. The one issue I see happening is that they are not reading the errors and not trying to see if they can problem solve. If I am in the classroom they call me over and most of the time I read the error with them and they find it right away without any help. They just need time with it to learn what to look for with the errors.
That is all for now, next week I plan on talking to the classes about my research as well as Blake will be visiting to discuss the use of Matlab within his research!
The first lab the students will be incorporating matlab. The students will use the projectile motion equation to model the path of the marble and compare experimental data to this model. I was there when the students modeled a “fake projectile motion” , the students are asked to determine the equation but have not had the chance to do so. So, while I was there so I could answer questions and such we had them use a different equation. Things went alright, it gets tough when lots of students are asking questions at the same time. But, the students worked in groups and I had asked if students got there code working to help teammates, which greatly helped! We also passed out the licenses for the students to load on a home computer and they will have an assignment to do at home next week!!
Over the past two weeks I have gotten the 2 honors courses up to the lessons on vectors and then plotting. With missing classes this week because of power outages I still have to get the AP classes up to speed.
For the vector lesson I showed them how to create vectors, both row and column, using the three different methods. The students ended up a writing a script file with the different methods for creating a vector and commented them, so they can use it for a reference.
Once the students knew how to create vectors we could move on to plotting. One of the first lessons we wrote a script file solving the range equation and for the plotting exercise we just built upon this. I went through how to plot velocity vs. range and then the students were asked to plot angle vs. range for angles between 15 and 75 degrees.
For the most part the students are catching on, some are doing really well with it and caught right on. I will rely on these students to help their peers out when I can’t be in class and they are working on a code.
The one thing I notice is that the students get an error message and they automatically call me over. I usually look at the error and their code and I ask them a question to help them debug and they get it right off the back. I think if they just read the error message and look at their code they would be able to debug on their own. I am going to try to stress this to the students and have them try to debug on their own prior to calling me over.
They are going to be using matlab to model the marble launcher in the next couple of weeks…stay tuned!
Today we learned how to write basic script files (M-Files). We used the range equation, an equation that they are familiar with, to demonstrate this. They put in the givens and then solved the equation….very basic, but we have to start small. I also went over how to write in comments. I really tried to stress that they have to comment their work so that if someone else wanted to see their work they could actually follow. This included having a header on each m-file, define what each variable and constant is as well as showing units!!!
Overall the students followed very well….some caught on quickly and others had a couple of issues to get over. Some of the common mistakes that we corrected quickly.
My first class went alright…the major issue was that I could not project what I was doing on my computer large enough for the students to read. So, there was a lot of “what does it say” which made it more stressful for me since it was not going smoothly. But, I am happy to say I got the text bigger and the next class went wonderfully!
Tomorrow Dr. Jumper is going to have them write an M-file to solve another equation that they are doing a lab with. So, hopefully this will be a good assessment tool for me to see what we need to go over again.
Next week we will go over vectors and how to solve equations that has a vector input.
This past week I attended the Annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in Minneapolis, MN. I had the chance to give an oral presentation on my work, “Galvanic Synthesis of Porous Metal Nanostructures Using Aluminum Nanoparticles”. There were about 10 people in attendance, which was a start and a good way to for me to get comfortable with speaking to others about my research. There were a couple of questions about my research, but they were more of suggestions if anything. Nothing I could not answer. All-in-all it was a good experience.
I had the chance of going to some other talks on a variety of topics; biosensors, particle fabrication, electrospinning, and education talks. I also did lots of networking with other graduate students and professors from many top universities. I exchanged information with some of them and hope to keep in touch.
But, don’t worry I did get a chance to see the city as well as the Mall of America
With all the laptops up and running with Matlab, I was set to go today with my first lesson. I started with only one of my honors physics classes today and will do the same lesson with the other honors class tomorrow. The goals for today:
1. Be familiar with the matlab interface
2. How to use the command window for basic math operations and calculations
3. variable assignment
I have decided to start out very basic with being familiar with the interface and what each window means. Since we are planning on doing modeling for experiments there are math operations that the students need to be familiar with. Of course this included how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers as well as trig functions, square roots, power functions, logs, etc… Then we moved on into assigning number and calculations variables and how matlab stores these in the workspace. We didn’t have much time and ended there.
I put together a matlab quick reference for the students. It is a pamphlet that has basic math operations, how to create vectors, plotting function, and other important commands that will come in handy
Below I have outlined my thought process to get the students familiar with matlab enough to do basic modeling. Please feel free to give me any pointers and thoughts about how to go about these topics and if you think I should add or subtract anything
1. matlab interface and basic calculations
2. M-files: How to save and execute a basic calculation of the range equation with assigning variables for the parameters
3. 1-D arrays: how to make row and column vectors and address them as well
4. 2-D arrays: Matrices making and addressing them
5. Plotting: how to generate and format plots including plotting two functions on the same plot
Uncategorized | mollyclay | 
March 1, 2012 7:39 am | 
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