College hosts event for annual North Carolina Science Festival

The College of Engineering invites the public to explore the relationship of art and science and participate in entertaining and educational activities for all ages during the annual North Carolina Science Festival.

A program titled Art & Design and Science, hosted by the Research Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (RT-MRSEC), will be held Saturday, April 8, on NC State’s Centennial Campus in Engineering Building I. All events are free but pre-registration is encouraged at http://go.ncsu.edu/ncsfreg.

The event will feature hands-on demonstrations and workshops, engaging talks, a science and art exhibit, take-home art and three presentations:

• Dr. Liz Paley will speak about the Potter’s Penguin Project, an initiative to make and exhibit more than 1,500 clay penguins for awareness of the impacts of global warming on penguin colonies in the Antarctic. The NC State University Crafts Center has more than 600 of these penguins on display through April 28.
• Jeanette Brossart, mosaic artist, will give sessions on mosaic design.
• Dr. Radmila Sazdanovic, NC State assistant professor of mathematics, will present “Art through Math: From Plato through Da Vinci to knotted polyhedra.”

NC State is part of the multi-institutional RT-MRSEC, currently funded by the National Science Foundation, which seeks to be a dynamic national and international resource for continuing research in areas of soft matter. Other researchers are students and faculty members from Duke University, North Carolina Central University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“The role of the RT-MRSEC is not only to conduct first class research in our laboratories but also to share our excitement about materials research with the general public through numerous outreach events,” says Dr. Jan Genzer, the co-director of the RT-MRSEC and the Culberson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State. “In these events we want to increase general public awareness of the importance of materials research through lectures and hands-on demonstrations, many of which we have developed within the RT-MRSEC center. We hope that students of various ages that attend our demonstration and lectures will learn more about the formation, properties and application of various materials and be able to reinforce the knowledge they gain in topics covered in their STEM classes.”

The 7th Annual North Carolina Science Festival is a two-week celebration fostering a sense of community in diverse disciplines and providing education about the cultural and financial impacts of science in North Carolina. This year’s event will take place in every county from April 7 to 23, 2017. Learn more at ncsciencefestival.org.

Information on NC State’s Centennial Campus, including maps, driving directions and parking details can be found at https://centennial.ncsu.edu/centennial/visitors.php.