Pre-College Materials Science Education: The Materials World Modules Program
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Pre-College Materials Science Education: The Materials World Modules Program Materials World Modules (MWM) is an educational program designed to supplement traditional science, math, and technology courses for middle and high school students. MWM is based on the principles of inquiry and design, and emphasizes active, hands-on learning. The program, which originated in 1993 with support from Northwestern University and a grant from the National Science Foundation, provides middle and high school students of various ability levels with opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom to real-world problems. From its inception, MWM has been a collaborative project involving university professors, secondary school teachers and students, editors, and graphic designers. When developing the program, R.P.H. Chang, director of Northwestern’s Materials Research Center and founder of the Materials World Modules program, and his staff approached the project as if they were a company. Their first priority was to learn the needs of their customers, beginning with teachers, in order to satisfy those needs. Among other things, teachers wanted to provide their students with stimulating activities that related science to everyday life, to find practical ways of promoting collaborative learning, and to bring cutting-edge scientific research into their classrooms. With these goals in mind, the MWM staff began to collaborate with teachers in the greater Chicago area to develop a series of modules. Teachers who field-tested the modules provided valuable “tips from the trenches,” which are included in the teacher’s edition of each module. The nine modules in the series deal with specific topics in materials science: Composites, Biodegradable Materials, Biosensors, Concrete, Food Packaging, Polymers, Sports Materials, Smart Sensors, and Ceramics. While each module is designed to cover approximately two weeks of class time, the modules are flexible enough to accommodate students’ and teachers’ specific needs and circumstances. MWM is designed not to supplant but rather to supplement and enhance traditional science, mathematics, and technology courses. Because materials science is an interdisciplinary field, the modules easily fit into a broad range of classes, including biology, chemistry, physics, life science, and health. The Biosensors module, for example, highlights concepts from chemistry (oxidationreduction reactions, making sequential dilutions), biology and life science (bioluminescence, enzymes), mathematics 90
(slope-intercept formula, calculating ratios), physics (electromagnetic spectrum, atomic structure, and energy states), and health (cardiovascular disease).
The Structure of the Modules MWM was designed in order to excite students’ curiosity about science, math, and technology. Toward this end, each module begins with a “hook” that demonstrates a unique property of the material being studied (see Figure 1). In Composites, for example, students receive two frozen pucks—one composed of pure water, the other of water
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