A new collaboration:
We have started a new collaboration with the Monarch School in Houston. It is a school dedicated to providing education to children with neurological differences. Thanks to the UH students and their vast repertoire of science-based demonstrations, we have started a new initiative to engage students in fun science activities on a regular basis. We thank the school for putting trust in us and giving us the honor to interacts with their students. Thanks also to all the UH team members- Zaida Hernandez, Ehsan Irajizad and Mehdi Torbati for their hard work! Here is the link to our first activity at the Monarch School's Facebook page and a short clip of the demo made by Mehdi (unfortunately, we broke the rope intead of pulling apart the books :)
(needs QuickTime)
High School Visits:
- In Spring 2014, I delivered a guest lecture at Alief High School in Houston. In addition, I engaged students in demonstrations to understand viscoelasticity. Students formed teams, prepared cornstarch solution and experienced it's response under different loading rates.
- In Fall 2012, I teamed up with the student chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at UH to deliver a lecture at the Reagan High School in Houston. For this event, we used simple demonstrations from day-to-day life such as chewing gum, soap bubbles, and balloons to excite the students towards the basic concepts of mechanics.
RET/HSS:
- In the summer of 2013, I hosted a high school teacher (RET) and a high school student (HSS) in the lab. We exposed them to the field of cell mechanics and gave them some basic training in modeling behavior of lipid membranes. The underlying idea was to show them the universality of the physical laws in governing the response of all kinds of materials - natural or synthetic.
Physics videos/demos used at different outreach events:
- ASME Luanch into Engineering Event (2015)
- Science Engineering Fair of Houston (2015)
