hello so what if you could light up
soccer fields without tapping into
electrical grid what if you could charge
cell phone when there’s no power plugs
what if you could pay for a cup of
coffee we’re just jumping up and down
not just in your fantasy these are
actually things I’ve been realistically
realized using the same scientific
foundation called piezo electricity
piezo electricity is a technique or it
uses a material that converts footsteps
into electricity ok so but what is this
peers electricity how does it work what
if something has to do with electricity
digging into these questions allowed me
to get exposed to this really exciting
learning experience of how human
ingenuity was applied to use scientific
foundation to address dire or maybe not
so dire societal needs so I have a small
wish I’d like to share this fun and
exciting side of science with very broad
audiences to general people who’s really
not into science young or old
even if it’s just for their sake of fun
or curiosity however when I try to talk
about science to people I can tell them
very far from this goal because my
polite audiences are generally
suppressing their yawns all teary-eyed
so what can I do the idea that I like to
share with you today
stand in communication with a canvas
seeks to use or borrow the power of art
to communicate science art is a great
way to convey complex scientific complex
concepts using visual intuition
interactive appeal and furthermore it
doesn’t need the use of art jargon that
very oftenly
disconnects your audience from the
context for example let’s say I wanted
to talk about a new approach to tuning
carbon ultra markup or size a sub on
sternal level
maximizing specific capacitance and co2
uptake would you have any idea what I’m
trying to talk about on the other hand
please take a look at this picture this
is a cover of a scientific journal
called advanced functional material that
was published last year the title of the
article that was published or featured
in this cover is just what I told you a
new approach to tuning carbon
ultra-micro pore size at sub Ostrom
level for maximizing specific pathogens
and co2 uptake I like you to imagine
that these acorns represents co2 carbon
dioxide that are floating in the air
around you you might have heard that
high concentration of co2 or carbon
dioxide has been related to global
climate issues such as our greenhouse
effects or acid rain the authors of this
article has found a way to take tiny
tiny barrels or holes into these
materials using ions represented here as
green and yellow blue sphere the trick
here is that these spheres the size of
these years are very very close to the
size of these acorns which represents
co2 well this allows you to do the
precise matching of the size enables the
co2 to fit very snugly into these holes
and get basically stored in the material
just like how acorns get snugly buried
into the ground by the squirrels my
point is doesn’t this picture do a much
better job of conveying the essence of
this work rather than this wordy
technical description so switching gears
a little bit so science technology
engineering and mathematics commonly
abbreviated as stem is also combined
with art abbreviated as steam generally
when people talk about steam that is an
approach of trying
to introduce stem students to art
classes to enhance their innovative
thinking skills and creativity the steam
that I like to present or propose here
today is actually trying to tap into the
power of art to help us become a better
missionary of conveying the fun and
excitement side side of science I have
been very fortunate to meet talented
wonderful teachers at Rochester high
school teachers listed here who has
agreed to try and join me in trying out
this experiment so our approach Falls as
follows the first step I stand in front
of the high school students and I give a
presentation to show the power of
artistic communication it goes very
similar to what I just talked about I
give them the cover of a journal
scientific journal and talk about how
this allows me to talk about complex
scientific context without really going
into jargons my presentation is then
followed by a presentation by an art
teacher at the high school I just copied
three bullet points from an art teacher
Brighton High School based on her
presentation that she gave she first
talked about inspired design basically
trying to communicate or teach the
students on how to use sorry how to use
shapes and patterns to give them a
visual appeal the next bullet point she
talks about making a statement so here
she describes how you can use your
artistic projects to get your viewer to
think or feel very deeply and the final
bullet point make it personal she
challenged the students to use the
project and connect to it with their own
experiences and beliefs so now the
students have some idea what art can be
used to convey science they also knows
some ways that artists use to bring
their concepts or ideas into artistic
presentation then I go back to the stage
and discuss some basic fundamental
principles of scientific applications or
scientific mechanism let’s take the
piezo electric
material example which I actually talked
about to the students last year at
Brighton high school the piezoelectric
material in its natural normal form has
some atoms that are positively charged
and negatively charged when you don’t
stomp on it basically these charges
these atom charges are uniformly
distributed within the material when you
chart when you stump
these modules get squeezed and it’s
squeezing distorts the atoms alignment
in the material and what you have is
some slide becomes a little more
negatively charged here on the left some
side becomes a little more positively
charged in a bulk material you have a
lot of these distribution occurring and
effective something becomes pretty
significant so if you actually connect
this to a wire you can have the
electricity moving and actually harvest
the electrical energy so in a nutshell
this is how PS electricity works that
give a presentation like this to the
high school students and the last step
or the step four is the key we actually
challenge the students to make artistic
projects based on anything anything as
long as it’s even remotely related to
the piezo electricity so here we first
group the students what happened here we
have some art students and students from
general physics group together and we
also go through some brainstorming
exercises as shown in the photo on the
Left through this exercises we see what
kind of things that the students took
from the message the student on their
side they get to learn about it they
they study about the material and they
put this all together some students took
the sustainable energy aspect of the
topic some students took the mechanism
of the piezo electricity some students
took it all the way into this generic
aspect of energy conversion say from
footsteps to electricity and finally we
wrap this whole thing whole we wrap this
up by exhibiting their art project in an
art exhibition event at Brighton
I like to share some of their creative
projects with them this one title energy
flow by Malick and Emerson shows the
boot that represents the piezo electric
motion the small script here are some
copies that I took from their art
artists statement basically they’re
trying to show how the piezo electricity
works but they’re also trying to
communicate the need for sustainable
energy to light up the world
this next whimsical creativity but
called like a battery by Jason and
Donnell they are trying to show the
mechanism of Pierre’s electricity by
showing how you can create the non
uniformity in piezo electric material by
using a stretching and bending person as
an analogy this is actually a very
common piezo electric mechanism when
materials are long and they’re shaped
like a wire in this case instead of
squeezing just by bending generates the
distribution of charges to create the
piezo electric effect we also had a lot
of poster based art products this one
called electricity by Jared and Jake
shows how a person here he is standing
on a piezo electric tile in the center
and by standing on it he’s creating
light showed by the light of electrical
bulb but you also see there are many
people standing up behind in lines
they’re basically waiting for their turn
their message is that people needs to
work together to power our world
sustainably the final example that I
like to share with you is an example of
how some of the students took it in a
unique way this project called paper
mache volleyball by Ben and Maria shows
how different forms of energy can
actually interrelate they took pictures
of different forms of energy such as
photosynthesis food firecrackers and
muscles and they mashed it up into a
shape of a volleyball to show how they
interconnect this also gave
I’m a personal connection to one of the
artists been who is a dedicated
volleyball player so they took the
message from the art teacher to make a
statement but they also wanted to make
it personal so in summary we had great
feedback from all these projects and
this is the comments of some of the
feedback that we had saying very fun and
different creative way of learning
science this can benefit us in helping
to understand difficult concepts
everyone involved had a good time which
is the whole point I think all these
comments suggest that we were able to
offer an effective but a little
different way to convey scientific
concepts to general audience including
the younger generations we also had a
very positive side effect that I wasn’t
really expecting as shown in this last
comment here we the teachers of
different disciplines like art and
physics normally don’t work together and
this project has been a great
opportunity to break that wall it was a
nice effect that we had that I didn’t
expect basically allowing us to learn be
exposed to different expertise and
disciplines so where do we go from here
what I would like to hope this would
evolve into or what I wonder is whether
this approach can be actually used to
communicate research done by people who
are deaf or hard-of-hearing we can
actually take their topic or they can
take their topic and communicate with
the high school students the high school
students can take their research topics
and create a project like this that way
this approach not only connects the STEM
disciplines to the general public but it
might also be able to bridge the heart
of hearing or the deaf community with
the community who are hearing and if
that becomes a reality maybe that’s
another idea with sharing thank you very much
soccer fields without tapping into
electrical grid what if you could charge
cell phone when there’s no power plugs
what if you could pay for a cup of
coffee we’re just jumping up and down
not just in your fantasy these are
actually things I’ve been realistically
realized using the same scientific
foundation called piezo electricity
piezo electricity is a technique or it
uses a material that converts footsteps
into electricity ok so but what is this
peers electricity how does it work what
if something has to do with electricity
digging into these questions allowed me
to get exposed to this really exciting
learning experience of how human
ingenuity was applied to use scientific
foundation to address dire or maybe not
so dire societal needs so I have a small
wish I’d like to share this fun and
exciting side of science with very broad
audiences to general people who’s really
not into science young or old
even if it’s just for their sake of fun
or curiosity however when I try to talk
about science to people I can tell them
very far from this goal because my
polite audiences are generally
suppressing their yawns all teary-eyed
so what can I do the idea that I like to
share with you today
stand in communication with a canvas
seeks to use or borrow the power of art
to communicate science art is a great
way to convey complex scientific complex
concepts using visual intuition
interactive appeal and furthermore it
doesn’t need the use of art jargon that
very oftenly
disconnects your audience from the
context for example let’s say I wanted
to talk about a new approach to tuning
carbon ultra markup or size a sub on
sternal level
maximizing specific capacitance and co2
uptake would you have any idea what I’m
trying to talk about on the other hand
please take a look at this picture this
is a cover of a scientific journal
called advanced functional material that
was published last year the title of the
article that was published or featured
in this cover is just what I told you a
new approach to tuning carbon
ultra-micro pore size at sub Ostrom
level for maximizing specific pathogens
and co2 uptake I like you to imagine
that these acorns represents co2 carbon
dioxide that are floating in the air
around you you might have heard that
high concentration of co2 or carbon
dioxide has been related to global
climate issues such as our greenhouse
effects or acid rain the authors of this
article has found a way to take tiny
tiny barrels or holes into these
materials using ions represented here as
green and yellow blue sphere the trick
here is that these spheres the size of
these years are very very close to the
size of these acorns which represents
co2 well this allows you to do the
precise matching of the size enables the
co2 to fit very snugly into these holes
and get basically stored in the material
just like how acorns get snugly buried
into the ground by the squirrels my
point is doesn’t this picture do a much
better job of conveying the essence of
this work rather than this wordy
technical description so switching gears
a little bit so science technology
engineering and mathematics commonly
abbreviated as stem is also combined
with art abbreviated as steam generally
when people talk about steam that is an
approach of trying
to introduce stem students to art
classes to enhance their innovative
thinking skills and creativity the steam
that I like to present or propose here
today is actually trying to tap into the
power of art to help us become a better
missionary of conveying the fun and
excitement side side of science I have
been very fortunate to meet talented
wonderful teachers at Rochester high
school teachers listed here who has
agreed to try and join me in trying out
this experiment so our approach Falls as
follows the first step I stand in front
of the high school students and I give a
presentation to show the power of
artistic communication it goes very
similar to what I just talked about I
give them the cover of a journal
scientific journal and talk about how
this allows me to talk about complex
scientific context without really going
into jargons my presentation is then
followed by a presentation by an art
teacher at the high school I just copied
three bullet points from an art teacher
Brighton High School based on her
presentation that she gave she first
talked about inspired design basically
trying to communicate or teach the
students on how to use sorry how to use
shapes and patterns to give them a
visual appeal the next bullet point she
talks about making a statement so here
she describes how you can use your
artistic projects to get your viewer to
think or feel very deeply and the final
bullet point make it personal she
challenged the students to use the
project and connect to it with their own
experiences and beliefs so now the
students have some idea what art can be
used to convey science they also knows
some ways that artists use to bring
their concepts or ideas into artistic
presentation then I go back to the stage
and discuss some basic fundamental
principles of scientific applications or
scientific mechanism let’s take the
piezo electric
material example which I actually talked
about to the students last year at
Brighton high school the piezoelectric
material in its natural normal form has
some atoms that are positively charged
and negatively charged when you don’t
stomp on it basically these charges
these atom charges are uniformly
distributed within the material when you
chart when you stump
these modules get squeezed and it’s
squeezing distorts the atoms alignment
in the material and what you have is
some slide becomes a little more
negatively charged here on the left some
side becomes a little more positively
charged in a bulk material you have a
lot of these distribution occurring and
effective something becomes pretty
significant so if you actually connect
this to a wire you can have the
electricity moving and actually harvest
the electrical energy so in a nutshell
this is how PS electricity works that
give a presentation like this to the
high school students and the last step
or the step four is the key we actually
challenge the students to make artistic
projects based on anything anything as
long as it’s even remotely related to
the piezo electricity so here we first
group the students what happened here we
have some art students and students from
general physics group together and we
also go through some brainstorming
exercises as shown in the photo on the
Left through this exercises we see what
kind of things that the students took
from the message the student on their
side they get to learn about it they
they study about the material and they
put this all together some students took
the sustainable energy aspect of the
topic some students took the mechanism
of the piezo electricity some students
took it all the way into this generic
aspect of energy conversion say from
footsteps to electricity and finally we
wrap this whole thing whole we wrap this
up by exhibiting their art project in an
art exhibition event at Brighton
I like to share some of their creative
projects with them this one title energy
flow by Malick and Emerson shows the
boot that represents the piezo electric
motion the small script here are some
copies that I took from their art
artists statement basically they’re
trying to show how the piezo electricity
works but they’re also trying to
communicate the need for sustainable
energy to light up the world
this next whimsical creativity but
called like a battery by Jason and
Donnell they are trying to show the
mechanism of Pierre’s electricity by
showing how you can create the non
uniformity in piezo electric material by
using a stretching and bending person as
an analogy this is actually a very
common piezo electric mechanism when
materials are long and they’re shaped
like a wire in this case instead of
squeezing just by bending generates the
distribution of charges to create the
piezo electric effect we also had a lot
of poster based art products this one
called electricity by Jared and Jake
shows how a person here he is standing
on a piezo electric tile in the center
and by standing on it he’s creating
light showed by the light of electrical
bulb but you also see there are many
people standing up behind in lines
they’re basically waiting for their turn
their message is that people needs to
work together to power our world
sustainably the final example that I
like to share with you is an example of
how some of the students took it in a
unique way this project called paper
mache volleyball by Ben and Maria shows
how different forms of energy can
actually interrelate they took pictures
of different forms of energy such as
photosynthesis food firecrackers and
muscles and they mashed it up into a
shape of a volleyball to show how they
interconnect this also gave
I’m a personal connection to one of the
artists been who is a dedicated
volleyball player so they took the
message from the art teacher to make a
statement but they also wanted to make
it personal so in summary we had great
feedback from all these projects and
this is the comments of some of the
feedback that we had saying very fun and
different creative way of learning
science this can benefit us in helping
to understand difficult concepts
everyone involved had a good time which
is the whole point I think all these
comments suggest that we were able to
offer an effective but a little
different way to convey scientific
concepts to general audience including
the younger generations we also had a
very positive side effect that I wasn’t
really expecting as shown in this last
comment here we the teachers of
different disciplines like art and
physics normally don’t work together and
this project has been a great
opportunity to break that wall it was a
nice effect that we had that I didn’t
expect basically allowing us to learn be
exposed to different expertise and
disciplines so where do we go from here
what I would like to hope this would
evolve into or what I wonder is whether
this approach can be actually used to
communicate research done by people who
are deaf or hard-of-hearing we can
actually take their topic or they can
take their topic and communicate with
the high school students the high school
students can take their research topics
and create a project like this that way
this approach not only connects the STEM
disciplines to the general public but it
might also be able to bridge the heart
of hearing or the deaf community with
the community who are hearing and if
that becomes a reality maybe that’s
another idea with sharing thank you very much
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