July 21, 2025
On March 27, 2025, the Center for Integration of Modern Materials on Demand (IMOD), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science & Technology Center (STC), the University of Washington (UW) Clean Energy Institute (CEI), and the UW Molecular Engineered Materials Center (MEM-C), a NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), teamed up to host a campus tour for students from Washington Middle School in Seattle’s Central District.
145 sixth-grade students attended the event, which included hands-on activities and tours of the Physics Planetarium, Quantum Technologies Training & Testbed Lab, and UW research labs led by Professors Sara Mouradian (electrical & computer engineering), Eleftheria Roumeli (materials science & engineering), Dan Schwartz (chemical engineering), Aniruddh Vashisth (mechanical engineering), Xiaodong Xu (physics/materials science & engineering), and Matthew Yankowitz (physics/materials science & engineering).
CEI, IMOD, and MEM-C partnered on an activity about circuits and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), as well as a “black boxes & spectroscopes” activity focused on materials characterization. The workshop was organized and led by Danica Hendrickson, CEI Associate Director of Education & Workforce Engagement, Caroline Long, IMOD Director of Education & Workforce Development, and Andrea Carroll, MEM-C Education Director. Graduate students across the three interdisciplinary research centers helped facilitate the activities, demo, and tours.
Our power grids were originally built around large generators that use turbines and magnets to generate electricity, including hydroelectric dams or steam heated by fossil fuel combustion or nuclear fission. Clean energy resources such wind and solar are smaller in scale and geographically distributed, variable due to the weather, and directly generate current, so we must modernize our power grids to safely incorporate these technologies.
In this activity, students use graphite pencils to draw a conductive circuit on paper, then use alligator clips to connect wires to LEDs and a 9-volt battery.
Washington MS teacher Leland Oshins said that students were excited by the event and talked about it the next day at school.
For more information about CEI’s programs for K-12 education, visit these pages or contact Danica Hendrickson at danicah@uw.edu.
