U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan helped inaugurate a special science lab in the Chicago area Thursdayand attended a separate event promoting more rigorous learning standards. <\/p>\n
Wheeling High School officials say their nanotechnology lab is the first of its kind in a U.S. public high school. <\/p>\n
Teacher Nancy Heintz says the labs high-powered microscopes can drill down to the nano level. How small is that? Think of the Lincoln Memorial on the back side of a penny, she says. <\/p>\n
If you imagined the eyelash on the Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny that gets you pretty close to the nano level. <\/p>\n
Heintz says teachers were able to see single atoms of copper when they came to learn how to use the scanning electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes over the summer. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, students showed off images of things theyd seen close up: butterfly wings, strands of hair, a DVD. <\/p>\n
Senior Bryan Zaremba was impressed by paper. It looks almost like a spider web, you can see all the fibers, he said. <\/p>\n
This is zoomed in at 3,300 times, so its pretty small, explained his lab partner, Eric Kaplan. On the computer screen was an image that looked more like a gray, post-apocalyptic forest than a scrap from someones notebook. <\/p>\n
Next to Zaremba was a scanning electron microscope which looks like a large desktop computer tower. Theres a crystal in here that shoots electrons down at a sample, and when the electrons hit the sample, they bounce back to detectors, and they build an image, Zaremba says. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
See more here: <\/p>\n
Small is big at new nanotechnology lab in Wheeling<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan helped inaugurate a special science lab in the Chicago area Thursdayand attended a separate event promoting more rigorous learning standards. Wheeling High School officials say their nanotechnology lab is the first of its kind in a U.S Continue reading