Service & Engagement

BC BIGS: Partnering with Big Brothers Big Sisters program in the Great Boston area, BC BIGS provides Boston College students the opportunity to serve as mentors to young people in Boston. It’s a great way to get involved in the Boston community, make a difference in a young person’s life, and meet other BC students who share similar passions.

Science Club for Girls: Founded in 1994, Science Club for Girls fosters excitement, confidence, and literacy in STEM for girls and young women from underrepresented communities with free, experimental programs.

We are working with Dr. Fangzhou Xia at MIT, who is an expert in mechatronics, robotics, programming, and automation, to develop free, educational games that are exciting for K-12 students and engage them with the quantum world of materials. The two particular games we are currently developing are Quantum Moire Designer and Quantum Adventure. Hope they can be online shortly and the links will be provided here.

Together with Fangzhou, we will incorporate a program of LEGO AFM into our on-campus and community outreach activities for K-12 students. One can use LEGO blocks to build a macroscopic atomic force microscope (AFM) demonstrating the basic operation principle: a low-power laser light reflects from a mirror onto a particular position of the ruler. The position can be controlled by the height of the mirror. (Video credit to Dr. Fangzhou Xia)

Reference reading:

A Conceptual Atomic Force Microscope using LEGO for Nanoscience Education. Hsieh et al., auSMT Vol. 4 No. 2 (2014)