Amazing Magnetic Liquids
Want to feel something really weird? Swish your gloved hand around in a vat of
magneto-rheological fluid and feel it morph from fluid to solid at the touch
of a button. Make a pool of magnetic ferrofluid "dance" and manipulate
blobs of ferrofluid with rare-earth magnets. You'll explore the surprising
properties of these materials and discover how their unusual micro-structure
makes them useful in all kinds of places - from your laundry room to the
operating room.
Amorphous Metal
Meet the future of metals. The unusual structure of amorphous metals makes them
incredibly hard. Drop one ball bearing on a platform made of amorphous metal
and another on a platform made of metal with a normal crystalline atomic structure.
The result is astounding: while one ball behaves in an expected fashion, the
other bounces for an impossibly long time.
Materials Science Overview Video
How does materials science use atoms and molecules to design the "stuff" of
our everyday lives? How has it changed human history and how does the performance
of materials grow from their structure, properties and processing? In this video,
you'll meet materials scientists who bring it all together.
Structure and Defects
Play with a sheet of ball bearings and discover how this simple model can be
used to investigate the secret structures, strengths and weaknesses of metals.
Touch Tables
At our touch tables you can join curious children of all ages in discovering
materials through hands-on experimentation. This area offers a variety of experiences
involving texture, color, and other properties of materials, and provides an
array of instruments to facilitate exploration. "Tumble tubes" offer
children the chance to invert columns containing various mixtures, helping
them learn about the nature of granular and liquid behavior.
Zoom!
Some things seem smooth to the naked eye, but what if you could get a much closer
look? Zoom from the macro to the nano scale and find out how scientists "feel
atoms" using Atomic Force Microscopes. |
