The Adera Lab regularly engages in outreach activities with a particular eye on encouraging high school and pre-college students to consider science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. We are also motivated to reach and engage a broader public audience.
In the 2021 summer, we hosted a high school senior Nikye Nixon in our lab. We plan to continue such engagement in summer 2022 and beyond to highlight the importance of STEM education in engineering.
In the 2022 summer, we hosted a high school senior Amira Hamilton from East Kentwood High Michigan through the SHARP program, and a college junior Miles Phillips from Howard University in our lab. Amira worked on developing a Schlieren visualization for vapor condensation. Miles worked on experimentally characterizing droplet impact, spreading, and retraction.
In the 2023 summer (July 13-14/2023), we participated in the Xplore Engineering workshop and delivered demonstrations and hands-on experiments for 4th–7th grade students from all 50 states. Xplore Engineering is a 2-day science-themed conference-like engineering STEM exploration annual event at UM targeting young children. Our workshop titled “SUPERHYDROPHOBIC” was designed to teach the children the concept of surface tension and wetting schience (hydrophilic versus hydrophobic). The goal of this demonstration was to teach young children the effects of surface tension in our daily lives and in the world around us by guiding them through a series of hands-on experiments. The participating students were able to articulate the meaning of superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic, how to make superhydrophobic surfaces at home, why water striders can walk on water, why paper boats self-propel when a drop of detergent is added in water, and why raindrops and bubbles are spherical in shape. Some of the photos taken at the summer 2023 event are shown below.
In the 2023 summer, Prof. Solomon Adera gave a lecture for the K-12 engagement session.
