MRS Takes the Lead in Materials Research Public Outreach
- PDF / 3,220,803 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 604.8 x 806.4 pts Page_size
- 111 Downloads / 201 Views
MRS Takes the Lead in Materials Research Public Outreach At the centennial meeting of the American Physical Society in March, D e p a r t m e n t of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson implored the physics Commu nity to make their science more comprehensible to the public. In a particularly strongly worded part of his speech, reproduced from the FYI newsletter of the American Institute of Physics, Secretary Richardson said, "What we need to do— what you need to do—is to better translate physics into piain English. Into examples we can all understand, and why it matters to them and to the country. In contrast, the public has an easier perception of the importance of funding the Iife sciences." With the insertion of "materials" or "materials research" into Richardson's Statement for "physics," the same message could have been delivered to the Materials Research Society during the recent celebration of our 25th anniversary. Like physics, the materials Community has a public identity problem, and the problem is probably a more serious one than that of physics. Much of the public at least knows about physics as a science, and a decent number of people had to take it in high school. I often fear that "materials" to the broad public means the stuff clothes and curtains are made of and is purchased at a fabric shop. Because of its objective to foster interdisciplinary materials research, MRS must take the lead in the materials Community in reaching out to the public to show that what we do matters to their well-being. Fortunately, MRS is actively taking the Secretary's message to heart in many new ways in recent years. The Academic Affairs Committee has steadily increased its interest ränge to undergraduate activities. The
K^JUJÜMJ^JU^ recent unqualified success of the Under graduate Materials Research Initiative and the increased participation of MRS in undergraduate accreditation of materials programs through ABET illustrate some of the evolutionary changes. During this year, the Public Affairs Committee had bifurcated itself into two major subcommittees: Government Affairs, which it has done in excellent fashion for several years, and Public Outreach, which we hope will bring additional focus on the types of efforts Secretary Richardson calls for. The proactive effort of the Committee to identify public outreach as a major segment of its activities is an exciting Step for MRS. We now need a solid Strategie plan with sever al action projeets. Perhaps the most exciting and revolu-
tionary of recent MRS outreach projeets is the proposal to develop a nationally traveling exhibit that interprets basic principles of physics and chemistry in materials science and identifies the elements of strueture-properties-processing-performance interrelationships as they apply in our work as materials researchers. The exhibit, entitled "Materials MicroWorld," is proposed to have a modular design that enables a 4500 ft2 installation in large museums and a 2500 ft2 Version for smaller museums or other sites. The exhibit plans to contain d
Data Loading...
