Contact: Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / swaney@andrew.cmu.edu
Bill Schlageter / 412-586-6023 / schlageter@pittsburghkids.org

Event: Carnegie Mellon University engineering students will showcase a series of user-friendly activities and scientific experiments to help children learn about nanotechnology at a festival dubbed NanoDays.

"We have joined forces with the Children's Museum to feature some interesting and unique hands-on demos designed to pique the interest of school-age children about the significance of nanotechnology and engineering in their daily lives," said Gregory V. Lowry, a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon and deputy director of the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology.

Some of the university's kid-friendly demos will include making balls with different surface coatings and comparing how they stick to a target to demonstrate the importance of surface chemistry on the behavior of nanomaterials in the environment, or sniffing a cache of colorful balloons containing scented extract to show that very small molecules can travel through solid objects. NanoDays events are free with museum admissions: $10 for children ages 2-18 and seniors, and $11 for adults.

Carnegie Mellon's nanotechnology team includes: Megan Leitch, Eric Li, Rui Ma and Stacy Louie, Ph.D. students in Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Matt Hotze, a project engineer in Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Stacy Pustulka, a Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering.

NanoDays is a nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscience and engineering and its impact on the future. Events, which are taking place March 26 through April 3, are organized by participants in the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network at more than 200 science museums, research centers and universities. NanoDays is designed to engage people in learning about this emerging new field of science where researchers like those at Carnegie Mellon are developing new materials and advanced technologies for environmental sustainability. For more information visit www.nisenet.org.

When: 1 p.m. (Press availability), Carnegie Mellon hands-on demonstrations, Saturday, April 2.

Where: Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, 10 Children's Way, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15212.

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