The National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NanoEarth) participated in  Virginia Tech’s 2024 Science Festival on Saturday, November 2nd. NanoEarth has brought nanoscience to each festival since 2014, excluding the limited 2020 virtual event. The Virginia Tech Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI) organizes the free and public event, catering to K - 12 age groups, families, school field trips, VT students, and the general public. This year, just under 2000 visitors, including eight schools with students aged pre-K to 12th grade from across Virginia, visited the festival.

NanoEarth explored nanoscience concepts, with the festival theme of “science is bigger than you think”. NanoEarth’s Diversity and Outreach Coordinator Sylvianne Velasquez, Research Associate Bipin Lade, Ph.D., Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) Specialist Charis Horn, Ph.D., Ph.D. candidate in Geosciences, Cecelia (Cece) Wood, Geosciences graduate student Emmanuel Paul Irumhe, and Food Science and Technology undergraduate Maiev McClain led participants in hands-on demonstrations. These included NISE NanoDays kits, such as water resistant nano-coated fabric, hydrophobic nano-sand, and magnetic ferrofluid. Participants could take home kid-friendly Nanooze magazines, created by the Cornell Nanoscale Facility (CNF) and MIT.nano science coloring sheets.

NanoEarth's contribution to the VT Science Festival was also highlighted in this VT News article.

Festival attendees experiment with ferrofluids with Emanuel Irumhe A festival attendee compares hydrophobic nano-pants to regular pants with NanoEarth volunteer Maiev McClain Bipin Lade explains ferrofluids to a festival attendee as other visitors experience other NanoEarth demos in the background A festival visitor learns about hydrophobic nano-pants with Emanuel Irumhe Charis Horn, Bipin Lade, and Sylvianne Velasquez pose with the festival sign Bipin Lade, Sylvianne Velasquez, and Charis Horn pose A festival attendee explores hydrophobic nano-pants with Bipin Lade Students experiment with hydrophobic nano-pants A student compares hydrophobic nano-sand to regular sand Students experiment with nano-sand A child experiments with nano-sand Children experiment with nano-sand Cece Wood, Bipin Lade, and Charis Horn pose

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