LEGO2NANO 2015

31 March 2015

Are you interested in an open science? Would you like to work on an ongoing project to make low-cost scientific tools accessible to kids? LEGO2NANO 2015 is recruiting for participants for this year’s summer school. This opportunity is open to current UCL students who are members of the Institute of Making only.

 

If you have skills or interest in any of these areas, please do apply:

• Designing, making or programming scientific instruments made from hacked components, LEGO and custom parts
• Developing data sharing software or apps
• Online learning applications for kids
• Tech entrepreneurship/open source economics
• Child psychology with a particular interest in hands-on learning

LEGO2NANO is a joint international project between UCL and partner universities in China aimed at making science accessible to school students by developing low cost tools, usually founds in labs, and costing thousands.

It is an example of a citizen science project, a project that uses the Internet to create a network of scientists and members of the public, all collaborating in collecting and analysing data over the Internet.

In a series of summer schools, students from UCL’s Institute of Making and the London Centre for Nanotechnology teamed up with Tsinghua University and Peking University in China to produce cheap atomic force microscopes (AFM) capable of seeing objects a millionth of a millimetre in size. Instead of using light to ‘see’ a sample like normal AFMs, Lego2Nano uses technology that ‘feels’ the surface of a material with a probe. The incredible detail at which these AFMs can analyse surface details can be represented in 3D prints.

Lego2Nano aims to allow students around the world to use this technology to analyse a variety of materials. As an international project using the Internet to both obtain crowdsourced funding and to offer an open-source, free design for an AFM, Lego2Nano demonstrates how the Internet is being used to revolutionise how scientific projects are conducted, and who has access to them.

instituteofmaking.org.uk/research/lego2nano

london-nano.com/news-and-events/lego2nano-summer-school

For LEGO2NANO 2015, we’re inviting applications from people interested in developing the AFM, and/or a possible multifunctional devices, developing online data sharing applications or use of these devices in teaching. This will start in May/June/July, in preparation for the next two-week summer school in Beijing/Shanghai China at the beginning of September 2015.

Apply here by the extended deadline - Wednesday 15th April

http://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PWSBsJeg3_FpAXs_HXdu4NBcodK1-wfiUjy8HQGzH4U/viewform?usp=send_form

Contact members@instituteofmaking.org.uk for more information