CU and Sciencenter work with teachers on 'Microworld'

Mike Plautz, educational outreach coordinator for Cornell's Materials Science Center, second from the right, joins Lansing Elementary School teachers, from left, Patti Jennings, Keith Thomson and Sandy Olver in watching the light pass through crystals grown in petri dishes. The activity was part of the Microworld Festival Workshop, Jan. 17, in 700 Clark Hall. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By John Wilson '98

A great many patterns are hidden in one of the world's most familiar portraits, one most people probably carry several copies of daily. The naked eye alone cannot detect these designs, but take a closer look with a microscope set to magnify objects 100 times and you might see a cluster of interconnecting diamonds drawn with rugged lines. Move the image ever so slightly, though, and the pattern begins to degenerate, only to be replaced by a new one. Put them all together, and what emerges is George Washington's face on a $1 bill.

This was one of several discoveries about "Dots and Dollars" to be made at the Microworld Festival Workshop for Ithaca-area elementary and middle school teachers Jan. 17 in Clark Hall. Cornell's Materials Science Center, in cooperation with the Sciencenter, a local hands-on science museum, hosted the seminar on using microscopes to enhance science education in grades four through eight as part of a national physical science curriculum development study conducted by the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

The 18 participating teachers also studied the finer details of fingerprints, bugs, sand and salt and performed an experiment intended to reveal the properties of a good magnifier all in an effort to learn new techniques and ways of bringing more science-oriented activities to their classrooms. "Nine-year-olds would stare at this for hours," said Sue Henne, a teacher at Lansing Elementary School, as she used a magnifying glass to examine a design produced by a color printer.

Later during the workshop the participants watched a video that was made by two teachers who said that microscope work in their classes aroused substantial interest among their students. "It was really neat to see what lives in a pile of dirt," said one girl on the video. Another testified to the value of knowledge gained by scrutinizing objects with a microscope: "You need to know about the environment you live in," she said.

Several teachers said that the microscope curriculum being made available to them at the Saturday seminar could help them accomplish a variety of objectives. Patti Jennings of Lansing Elementary hopes to organize a science festival for students and their parents similar to the Cornell workshop and said of the ideas she obtained, "I can start putting together things for my students on Monday." Caroline School teacher Jane Clark speculated that having a concrete program might assist in convincing her school to purchase more equipment.

But she won't have to wait for a funding allocation in order to implement the activities. Under an agreement with the Materials Science Center, the participating teachers can borrow microscopes and items related to the curriculum from Cornell. And perhaps more importantly, the teachers can count on Cornell "scientist-partners," who are science lecturers and graduate students, to visit their classes periodically and assist with experiments. The partners worked with the teachers during the seminar.

"Most of the time I sit in a lab in the basement," said Rolf Ragnarsson, an advanced graduate student in physics who has been associated with the microscope workshop for each of the three years it has been held at Cornell. "People don't know what you're doing or if it has any relevance. This is a reality check -- a way to feel more connected to society and show that real people do science." Many of the graduate students also said they enjoyed the opportunity to work with children that the program provides.

Mike Plautz, educational outreach coordinator at the Materials Science Center, who organized the workshop with Kathleen Hunt, the Sciencenter's director of education and a 1979 Cornell graduate, expressed a desire to help narrow the gulf that tends to exist between primary schools and postsecondary institutions. "It's often difficult for schoolteachers to make contacts with universities," he said. "With this program we're hoping to break down some of the walls."