AV俱乐部

The Discovery Centre鈥檚 latest exhibit, 'Too Small to See,' packs a big punch.

You can zoom in on a butterfly wing and each tiny scale, then dive down even deeper to the molecular level. You can magnify a computer chip 100,000 times. You can walk through a silicon crystal structure and see atoms arranged in amazing repeating patterns. There are hands-on activities to explore on two levels of the downtown science centre.

It鈥檚 more than a teensy bit interesting, even for an old nano hat like Ian Hill, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science. His field of research is nanotechnology鈥攃reating new electronic materials and devices at the molecular scale, things like transistors, microprocessors, computer chips and batteries.

His main interest is in using nature to help create nanotechnology. Learning from nature, nanotechnology promises ways of making systems that are smaller, lighter, stronger, more efficient, but cheaper to produce. In his lab in the Dunn building, Dr. Hill grows carbon nanotubes鈥攁toms bonded together to form a long, tubelike structures鈥攆or solar cell applications.

In the Discovery Centre exhibition, the carbon nano tubes are blown up to the size of tree trunks so visitors can understand their structure. On a recent visit, kids were racing around around them in a exuberant game of hide and seek.

鈥淩ight now we鈥檝e got solar walls made of silicon; they鈥檙e efficient but still too expensive,鈥� remarks Dr. Hill, who just returned from Princeton University where he spent a sabbatical as a visiting research scientist. 鈥淚鈥檓 trying to make solar cells efficient enough but much less expensive to produce.鈥�

There wasn鈥檛 a Discovery Centre when Dr. Hill was a kid growing up in Dartmouth, but he says play and experimentation are key to getting kids to love science.

'Too Small to See' is presented by AV俱乐部. It will be on display at the Discovery Centre, 1593 Barrington Street, until December. The centre is open daily from 10-5.