By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
Eric Brown, as assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, took his audience of about 50 on an amazing journey into the world of nanotechnology during the second lecture in Fairhaven’s 2013 lecture series, “Turning Points: Critical Events and Influential People of the Past 30 Years.”
Brown complemented his talk, “Nanotechnology’s HUGE Impact on Our Lives Over the Last 30 Years,” with a variety of images, many of which displayed amazing photos produced with an atomic force microscope.
During his talk, Brown defined nanotechnology and presented an overview of its development since 1986, along with some predictions about where the field is going in the future.
Nanoscience studies extremely small things around the size of an atom. For example, a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers (nm) in diameter. The importance of nanoscience is that same material behaves and looks different at the nano scale. The physical appearance, interaction, color, and many other important physical, chemical, and biological properties are different.
Brown presented nanotechnology as a useful interdisciplinary tool in physics, chemistry and biology. He gave several example of how nanotechnology is playing an increasingly important role in the detection and treatment of cancer.
Throughout his talk, Brown credited the work of UWW students, many of whom participate in UWW’s Undergraduate Research Program.
The Fall Undergraduate Research Day is Sep. 25 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Hamilton Room of the University Center.
Brown invited his audience to attend UWW’s Fourth Annual Nanoscience Symposium on Oct. 18. The day-long symposium is free and open to the public, although some sessions require prior registration.
For more information on the symposium, visit http://www.uww.edu/cls/nano/.
The next lecture in the Fairhaven Lecture Series will be presented at 3 p.m. on Monday, Sep. 23 by Michael Bennett, assistant professor of languages and literature at UW-W. Bennett’s lecture is entitled, “Three Decades of Theatre Trends: From Absurdism and Experimental Theatre to Multicultural Drama and Performance Art.”
All lectures are free and open to the public and are held on every Monday through Dec. 2 at 3 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of Fairhaven Retirement Community, 435 West Starin Rd. Whitewater. Street parking is available adjacent to the building.
Links to videos of lectures, including those from prior series, can be found at http://www.uww.edu/contedu/fairhaven.
