Teaching Nanoscience in the Earth and Environmental Sciences

Find out why you should consider teaching about nanoscience in your Earth and Environmental Science classes. Nanoscience is an exciting emerging field of research that provides abundant opportunities for research and employment in the Earth and Environmental Sciences. Currently, the Earth and Environmental Sciences are underrepresented in their participation in this revolutionary field of study—exploring truly frontier research topics, training future geoscientists with the skills and knowledge required to do this research, and contributing to research with funding levels approaching $10 billion annually (US) and nano-enabled products approaching $3 trillion (globally). We need community-wide participation of geoscientists to engage this new scientific revolution. Nanoparticles (natural, engineered and incidental) are everywhere in the Earth system, and there's a place for teaching nanoscience in all our Earth Science courses.
This webinar will present an overview of basic concepts about nanoscience, and the many ways that nanomaterials interact with the Earth system. Nanomaterials (natural, engineered and incidental) play central roles in the energetics and mass balance of Earth processes, and also have huge impacts on environmental and human health. At the nano-scale the "rules" are different, and there are many examples of size dependence of physical and chemical properties of materials that may be quite different on the nano- vs. micro- or meso-scale. This webinar will summarize the key concepts about nanoscience in the Earth system recently published in 10-page review article in a recent issue of Science: Natural, incidental, and engineered nanomaterials and their impacts on the Earth system.
We will also provide an overview of a new website that supports teaching about nanoscience in your regular course work (e.g., Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Petrology, Hydrology, Environmental Geology....): Teaching Nanoscience Across the STEM Curriculum. We provide suggestions on "What", "Why", and "How" to teach nanoscience. There is an introduction to basic concepts of nanoscience, and perhaps most importantly, we have developed an on-line annotated bibliography of over 500 references that can be readily integrated into your coursework on Nanoscience Topics Across the Geoscience Curriculum, including human health, societal impacts, and ethics. Powerpoint presentations from the Goldschmidt 2017 and 2018 Nanoscience workshops, and the 2018 NanoEarth workshops are also posted on the workshop program pages.
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