Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology Course Assignments

There are 12 small weekly writing assignments that will test your overall 'big picture' concepts and help to develop a 'nano-vocabulary'. You'll post your answers to these in the ETUDES assignments window for each week. In addition, there are two larger writing assignments, described below, which will help you focus on an industry, technology, and or company involved in nanotechnology. In the first assignment you will review a technology, industry, and company, and in the second assignment, you'll describe a novel approach to solving a large problem using nanotechnology.

Project one - Technology review

In the first assignment you'll review a commercial application of nanotechnology. It should be a product or technology that is being prepared for market, but it doesn't have to be on the market yet. You'll review the the technology, the product, how nanotechnology is addressing a specific need, including the 'problem-solution pair'. Your assignment should focus on four key areas; first the company, second, the technology, third, the device or product itself, and fourth, the size of the market. Think of these four perspectives as corners of a square, and tell your story from the middle of the square. All four corners are important. The goal of this assignment is to learn about the most current nanotechnology that is closest to the market, and to understand how young companies are approaching the needs of the market with the most current technologies available.

Your assignment should be about 1,000 to 1,500 words, meaning from three to five pages in length. Write an executive summary if you wish.

Start your assignment by picking a product or application of interest, then researching the technology, with an emphasis on the problem that is being solved. Take time to understand the size of the market, the magnitude of the problem, and some rough estimate of the value of the technology. There are qualitative and quantitative measures of technology value, including the value of having 'first mover advantage'.

As with the midterm, this assignment will be graded on effort, and presentation. Be sure to spell and grammar check your assignment.

Project two - Technology innovation

The second assignment is very much like the first, with one big exception. You are choosing the application, and can 'invent' your technology. You have to be reasonable though. An acceptable assignment would recognize the need for a much improved solar energy panel, with a roughly 10x improvement in the cost per performance ratio. You would identify key losses in silicon, a more efficient quantum efficiency, etc. You could also look at high performance particle for controlled drug delivery inside a body, say when attached to certain cells. A less likely assignment might be cold fusion, perpetual motion, etc. For this assignment you'll focus much less on the company, and much more on the technology that's needed to solve the problem, and try to identify the value of that problem. Big problems are worth more. Energy, waste, medicine, are all good applications.

This assignment will be difficult as you'll want to have a technology today that might not exist for years, or decades, and it might not even be a practical technology. Your assignment should be about 1,000 to 1,500 words, meaning from three to five pages in length. Write an executive summary if you wish. Your assignment will be graded on 'practical imagination', good research, and effort, including presentation.

Optional assignment - Career evaluation

During the tenure of this class you will be exposed to many new technologies, science, and applications associated with nanotechnology. As you evaluate your career experience, your foundation knowledge, and your aptitude to learn new skills, consider what you might do after this class to bring your enthusiasm for nanotechnology into the workplace. MVLA students might consider how this course will affect your direction in both your undergraduate and graduate educational goals. This optional assignment may be turned in at anytime during the class. Submit it in the 'extra credit' assignment window in ETUDES.