This project offers a web gateway designed to educate users about engineering micro/nanosystems through a freely accessible web-based gateway where user-generated models, example simulations, and design methodologies are shared.
Micro and nanosystems (MEMS and NEMS or N/MEMS) inspire children in the same way as bridges, trains, cars, and radios did in the past. For example, Nintendo Wii links the physical and digital worlds through a MEMS accelerometer. The N/MEMS industry exceeds $5B in annual revenue and is well recognized as a growth business. However, critical gaps between novice and expert users, prediction and experiment, and length and time scales slow technological advances. This project team exploits this new-found interest in technology by building a virtual community which introduces how N/MEMS work and facilitates new designs by novices and experts.
To achieve the goals of this project, a multidisciplinary team offers a system of tutorials, guidelines, and a toolbox/simulator that can be used for creating, testing, and modeling designs for nanosystems. The target audience includes K12 students, undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars. The objective is to expose novice users to models and structures inherent in nanosystems using a 3-D interface that can be used directly by users to manipulate model components into visual representations. This system promises to offer novice users the opportunity to interrogate and apply complex physics models using an easy to use and intuitive graphical user interface. The system is expected to be useful to experts in this domain by enabling them to extend or add new nanosystems models. This project involves collaboration between computer scientists, mechanical scientists, and electrical engineers, at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Illinois, and Purdue University.
This novel framework, implemented online, is expected to be self-sustaining - piloted by its users. That is, users contribute to the Wiki-driven model and solution libraries, and to tutorials and templates. The 3D graphical user interface expedites system design and motivates novices at many educational levels to participate.
