On Tuesday, April 4th, the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum, a local interactive children museum, hosted a group of University of Michigan Chemistry Department PhD and Postdoctoral students to showcase recently developed activities and demos.  The activities and demos were developed as a collaboration between CSIE|UM and the Hands on Museum to feature research being conducted in the UM Chemistry Department.  This event was the last event in a four part series called ‘Science for the Public’ promoting understanding of science research to the general public.

The activities ran from 10 am until 4 pm and included more than 20 graduate students and postdoctoral associates from 9 different research groups.  The activities included “Shrinky dinks” teaching about polymers from the McNeil lab, “Cars and tracks” teaching about small molecule activation from the Lehnert lab, “Play dough catalysis” teaching about catalytic cycles in catalysis and enzymes from the Wolfe and Narayan lab, “Can you code it” teaching about computational chemistry from the Zgid lab, “Good bones” teaching about vitamins from the Banaszak-Holl lab, “Will it bubble” teaching about electrochemistry from the McCrory lab, and “Lego fragmentation” teaching about mass spectroscopy from the Ruotolo lab.  Children and parents were fascinated by the activities as they got to learn, touch, and play with the science before them.  The event was extraordinarily successful and there was positive feedback from the children, parents, Hands on Museum Staff, and graduate student participants.  Hundreds on children and parents had the opportunity to learn about the research being conducted at the University of Michigan though this day long event.

Continued development of specific activities that showcase chemical research at the University of Michigan is ongoing and further opportunities to engage the general public in these activities is forthcoming.