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Second-year chemistry graduate student Kirsten Griffiths teaches Los Angeles Unified School Distr

Students in 14 underfunded Los Angeles schools will be receiving an unexpected donation to their science classes – a scanning tunneling microscope which would cost $100,000 to $280,000 retail price.

Thanks to UCLA’s Science Outreach Program, graduate and postdoctoral students on campus voluntarily built the microscopes for about $1,000 each, and trained Los Angeles Union School District high school teachers on using them in experiments that they hope will attract more students to science.

Sponsored by the California NanoSystems Institute on campus, the UCLA Community Partnership Foundation (commonly referred to as UCLA in LA) and the Dreyfus Foundation, the program introduces current and relevant scientific subjects in experiments students can do in the classroom.

They also collaborate with the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies to send flyers to local teachers, who voluntarily attend workshops for experiment ideas for their classrooms and to fulfill continuing education requirements.

The scanning tunneling microscope experiment was the sixth workshop this year, the second academic year of the program. Experiments this year included creating a solar cell and a technique commonly used to make computer chips called photolithography.

The microscope allows magnification of objects that are smaller than light waves and are therefore too small to be seen with light. The microscope drags a fine tip across a surface in a process analogous to Braille, nearly touching the specimen being studied so that electrons hop the gap to the specimen. The microscope’s tip scans the surface, and variations in the distance to the specimen allow the computer to map its image.

Funding shortfalls and standardized test score requirements in the Los Angeles school district make it difficult for many high schools to introduce experiments into the classroom, something that the Science Outreach Program is trying to ameliorate.

“A lot of L.A.-area high schools don’t do experiments,” said Sarah Tolbert, associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry in charge of coordinating the program.

In Los Angeles, high school science teachers are required to teach standardized test material, Tolbert said. “Teachers and students don’t get a lot of modern science in high schools, and as a result nobody wants to do science.”

Tolbert said she hopes the high-tech and diverse experiments the program introduces will increase student interest in science, something she said needs to be done before students enter college.

“We should be taking the cool science that we know how to do and using it. ... That’s how you make the next generation of scientists – by getting them excited about science.”

Teachers who have already performed the experiments in their courses say it is working.

Tom Canny, a science teacher at Verdugo Hills High School, said his students were very interested in the experiments because the real-world technology is something they could potentially work with themselves.

“Unlike in some situations, they were very responsive,” he said.

Ellen Collins, who teaches science courses at Grant Senior High School, said she thought it was important to keep students excited about science while they are in high school.

“They’re seeing the connectivity of science. So they see the real-world application,” she said. Collins added that LAUSD schools would never have the resources to introduce such technology into the classroom, but that it is exactly what students could benefit from exposure to.

“It’s cutting edge science (that) generally (a student) that’s in high school now is going to have a shot at a career (in),” Collins said.

Special education courses also had success with some of the program’s experiments.

Charlie Schwartz, a special education teacher from Los Angeles High School, said he was satisfied with past experiments, and believed the microscope would be successful.

“This is good with special ed kids because it’s tactile,” he said.

Adam Braunschweig, a fourth-year chemistry graduate student who came up with the idea to build the scanning tunneling microscope and built the prototype, said he took on the challenging project because he hoped to get across the idea that such technology was accessible.

“Every school has the problem that science is not presented in an interesting way,” he said. Braunschweig said the project was not directly related to his field, and compared himself and other organic chemists to cooks.

“If we can build it, anyone can build it,” he said. “None of this has anything to do with organic chemistry.”

Braunschweig said he did not believe all students would be interested in nanoscience, but that the exposure was valuable. “At least the opportunity is there so if they are interested, it gives them something to pursue.”

Graduate students also said they personally benefited from the learning experience the program provided.

Avik Chakravarty, a postdoctoral scholar with the NanoSystems Institute, said he rarely gets to teach, but that the program allowed him to contribute to teaching indirectly.

“It’s actually quite rewarding to work in a group and actually get something going,” he said. “The teachers seem very enthusiastic and seem to get a lot out of it.”

Jason Belitsky, a postdoctoral scholar who worked on the microscope and other experiments in this workshop series, said the program seems to be working, but also seems under-utilized.

“One of our frustrations is that (the program) works great for the people that show up, but we haven’t gotten the turnout we’d hoped for from the teachers.”