New tours give public a look inside VU laboratories

by Allison Byrum

Area students ranging from fourth-graders to high school recently toured several of Vanderbilt's laboratories as part of a new initiative co-sponsored by the Cumberland Science Museum.

The tour was a test run of a larger program designed to cultivate interest in the sciences to Middle Tennesseans. Organizers hope to develop a series that would bring schoolchildren and their families into the University's research laboratories for a firsthand look at science in action on a weekly basis.

"The idea is to make it feasible for the public come into the laboratories and see the research being done at Vanderbilt," said Rick Chappell, director of science and research communications and organizer of the project. "We are very happy to be collaborating with the Cumberland Science Museum on this project."

The project could also be a boon for the Cumberland Science Museum.

"We are very excited to be joining with different organizations in the community and Vanderbilt is the perfect fit," said Sharon Mendonsa, program manager at Cumberland Science Museum. "The tours will add a unique and valuable aspect to the museum's growing pool of resources to more fully educate Nashville public about science."

The pilot program commenced Feb. 23. Eleven families met at Cumberland Science Museum at noon for a two-hour excursion to campus that would include visits to four laboratories and conversations with four top researchers.

The groups gathered at a kiosk in the lobby of the museum. Framed by a wall of photographs of Vanderbilt researchers, the kiosk housed a computer linked to Vanderbilt's Exploration Web site. Visitors were encouraged to browse through the Web site and read background information on the scientists featured in this tour as well as others scientists at Vanderbilt.

Before the tours commenced, Mendonsa and fellow program manager Becky Matthews used a laser microscope and robotic car to introduce some of the scientific concepts that the researchers would later demonstrate.

Vanderbilt students majoring in science communications served as tour guides answered questions about the University and the labs.

Since the tour took place during National Engineering Week, Vanderbilt and Cumberland Science Museum visited three engineering labs where professors Michael Goldfarb, Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, Jim Davidson and James Wittig hosted the visitors. The four researchers represented mechanical, electrical and biomedical engineering.

Goldfarb's mechanical engineering laboratory prepared a robotics demonstration. Students and parents experimented with a bilateral telemanipulator -- a type of robotic device that allows operators to manipulate objects in inaccessible environments without direct physical contact. In this case, the human-scale arm was connected to a tiny pin, allowing the operator to manipulate a miniscule bolt. The telemanipulator allowed the visitors to "feel" the bolt even though it was far too small to manipulate manually.

With faces contorted in concentration, guests tried their hand at the robotic arm. Choruses of "Wow!" and "Cool!" accompanied the experiment as onlookers switched from watching the robotic arm to studying the tiny device actually maneuvering around the bolt. A penny taped beside the bolt reminded viewers how tiny it was; the bolt could easily fit inside Lincoln's ear.

After visitors left the robotics lab, Mahadevan-Jansen explained her work, which involves using lasers to detect the boundary between healthy and diseased tissue comprising brain tumors. Participants were able to experiment with a variety of colors of lasers as well as with the fiber optic strands that are used to direct the lasers to the appropriate tissues. Mahadevan-Jansen demonstrated her work using a "Jell-O model." Using different colors of dessert gelatin, she demonstrated the way colored beams pass through or are absorbed by the red or green gelatin representing different types of tissues. By choosing the appropriate color of laser, scientists can target specific tissues. In Mahadevan-Jansen's work, the targeted tissues are those that are cancerous or pre-cancerous.

Visitors guessed which colors of light would be absorbed by which colors of Jell-O and experimented with directing the laser light through thin fiber optic strands used by surgeons.

"The best part about experimenting with Jell-O is that you can eat it when you are done," said Mahadevan-Jansen.

The last stops were the electrical engineering labs of Davidson and Wittig. Wittig gave visitors a demonstration of one of Vanderbilt's Scanning Electron Microscopes, which can magnify objects up to 1 million times their normal size. He also provided visitors an up-close look at the compound eye of a common housefly. Davidson explained to visitors the possible uses of diamond film, a nanometer-thin layer of diamond that has amazing electrical properties. The diamond film, laid down like paint, is only nanometers thick. It's made up of tiny peaks and valleys of carbon in the diamond arrangement. The guests were amazed to learn that the points of the peaks are fewer than five atoms across.

The film is still in the experimental stages but demonstrates amazing electrical properties. Davidson tempted the visitors with suggestions of wallpaper-thin television screens that can be rolled up and transported, then rolled out flat to deliver the sharpest images ever.

"It would be like looking out a window," said Davidson.