For three weeks during the summer of 2010, the Ediger group and others supported by the National Science Foundation, led a class for 15 high school juniors entitled: Smaller than the eye can see - How your computer is made. We were assisted by members of UW-Madison's Materials Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). These sessions, which were part of UW-Madison's PEOPLE program, ran for two hours each day.

     Each year, the PEOPLE program engages about 180 new high school freshmen; most of these students are from under-represented groups. These students interact with UW-Madison throughout high school and spend a portion of each summer on campus. The PEOPLE program has an excellent track record; more than 75% of the students who begin the program successfully complete it, with 94% of these students going on the college. About half of the graduates of the PEOPLE program enroll at UW-Madison and these students are retained at high rates.

     All the individuals involved in presenting the summer class are supported in their research projects by the National Science Foundation. We thank NSF for support. We estimate the effort to produce our 2010 course at 300 person-hours for personnel supported by NSF. Smaller than the eye can see – How your computer is made is an evolving program, with each group of participants modifying and refining the content. We are grateful to Keith Zeise and Mike Lawton, science teachers from Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School, for helping us to improve our program by clarifying the objectives for each classroom session.

Keith Zeise has taken two of the activities from our "Smaller than the eye can see" curriculum and prepared modules that are suitable for Wisconsin Senior High School Classrooms.  These modules are entitled "Happy or Sad?  It's all a State of Matter, not Mind!"  and  "On a Scale of 0 to 1, TEN is not "10".  These modules were presented in workshops to teachers at the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers in April 2010.  They have also been presented to science teacher's at Milwaukee's Rufus King High School.

      Below you will find the materials that we used in our 2010 summer program. The first document presents an overview of the entire program. For each day, activities, objectives, and required materials are specified. Additional details about activities can be found in accompanying documents. Please note that there may be safety issues associated with these activities which are not fully described in the handouts. These activities should only be performed under the supervision of trained personnel.