High School Field Trips

Every year VINSE invites groups of high school students to visit our facilities, perform an experiment, utilize our electron microscopes, and learn about nanotechnology during a day visit.

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Section Contents

Engaging, Experience-Based Learning

outreach map
  • 3,658

    Students attended VINSE high school outreach programs
  • 70

    High schools partnered with VINSE for field trips
  • 26

    Middle Tennessee counties impacted by VINSE outreach

Students are able to choose for four unique hands-on lessons: 

Blackberry Solar Cell

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Lesson 1

How can you squeeze electricity from a blackberry? 

More than 3,000 middle TN high school students can answer this question from personal experience. They have made solar cells out of blackberry juice and measured the electrical power they produced. The students also examine the material that they used to make the solar cells with one of VINSE’s scanning electron microscopes. These instruments can magnify objects by as much as 500,000 times, enough to allow the students to see nanoscale features 50,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair and learn how these tiny features can affect how much sunlight a solar cell can capture.

Maximum students: 20

Forensics/Analytical Laboratory

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Lesson 2

How are the optical properties of materials used in answering forensic and fundamental scientific questions? 

Using a form of non-destructive testing spectroscopies, students will be engaged in a whodunnit-themed activity.  The students will discover the unique properties of naturally occurring and synthetic materials, in part through direct measurement of the dramatic and varied optical properties. The awesome and dramatic color change of materials will be used as an introduction to the understanding of natural processes in everyday objects. The value of such spectroscopic measurements in answering forensic and fundamental scientific questions will be demonstrated. By the conclusion of the program, students will use the most advanced analytical instrumentation available to modern science to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities present in today’s society.

Maximum students: 16

Cleanroom Solar Cell

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Lesson 3

How does a solar cell work and how can you make one? 

High school students go inside the VINSE cleanroom, home of the cleanest air in middle Tennessee, and find out with hands-on activities! The students create a full silicon/polymer hybrid solar cell, measure the electricity generated by shining light on the solar cell, and use light-based stenciling to pattern metal electrodes like those used on solar cells. Students also determine how to change the amount of electricity a solar cell collects, use that electricity to power a lightbulb, and explore how their results could make better solar cells.

Maximum students: 16

Cleanroom Microfluidics

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Lesson 4

How can you mimic organ behavior while leaving your organs in your body or detect COVID in minutes? 

High school students go inside the VINSE cleanroom, home of the cleanest air in middle Tennessee, and find out with hands-on activities! The students stencil with light to pattern a mold for hair-thin pipes, put together flexible pipes to make microfluidic devices, and examine how liquid in the devices flows using the same tools and techniques as industry and academic researchers.  Students also design, make, and test their own custom paper microfluidic devices and learn how differences in their designs alter the behavior of the fluid.

Maximum students: 16

Schedule a Field Trip

To learn more or schedule a field trip, please contact: