Curriculum development at the K-12 level.

The California State education standards (Fig. ) mandate that grade 5 (ages 9 and 10) students are exposed to some key concepts in materials chemistry for the first time. For example students are required to learn about properties of metals, including their thermal and electrical conduction, the existence of techniques which permit the structures of materials (well-ordered arrays) to be observed, that chemical and physical properties of materials can aid in their separation, and that there exist simple compounds called salts with specific properties. The syllabus is clearly exciting and innovative, but can be problematic for grade 5 teachers, some of whom have little background in science or chemistry.

Fig. 1: California State standards for grade 5 physical sciences. From Science: Content Standards for California Public Schools http://www.cde.ca.gov

Improvement of the public's understanding of chemistry.

Despite appropriately being described as the ``Central Science'', chemistry has developed a rather negative image. This component of the CDM aims to mitigate the negative image of chemistry by highlighting the wonders of advanced materials and showing that they are the result of progress in chemistry. Because of the limited budget in Phase I, we will initially leverage facilities and programs that have been developed by others. Our specific goal for Phase I is to work with local museums at our host sites to bring the NSF-supported MRS traveling exhibition, ``Strange Matter'
' (http://www.strangematterexhibit.com/) to our four respective cities. We are working with local sponsors to raise funds for the exhibit, to leverage the Center impact without needing to provide all the financial resources. We are developing a series of public lectures and school programs to accompany the exhibit that will highlight the contributions of chemistry to the materials shown.