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Partner Highlight: International Partner - El Laberinto de las Ciencias y las Artes, San Luis Potosí, México

Rashmi Nanjundaswamy

We would like to welcome the science center Laberinto de las Ciencias y las Artes (Labyrinth of Science and Art, by its name in Spanish) as a NISE Net international member.

Since Laberinto opened in 2008, their visitors have had the opportunity to understand how small nano is and its importance to the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. In addition to being a science center, Laberinto is envisioned as a art and cultural center, where people from North Central México can have an in-depth hands-on experience with more than 160 exhibits organized in clusters, that interpret relevant science phenomena and current science topics in five galleries:

  • Entre redes y conexiones (Within Networks and Connections): an adventure to explore and discover the many things that nature, society, science knowledge and technology development have in common;
  • Desde el Espacio (From Space): an astronomy room dedicated to the exploration of the universe;
  • En la naturaleza (In Nature): a green room where the main focus is on biodiversity;
  • Tras los colores (Behind the colors): an atelier for artistic expression;
  • and Hacia lo imperceptible (Towards the Imperceptible): a journey from the macro-world to the nano-world.

The availability of the Nano Days Digital kit (http://www.nisenet.org/nanodays-digital-kit-contents) has made it possible for the activities to be incorporated as a year-round program to enhance the experience of the gallery Hacia lo imperceptible. The gallery has a laboratory with optical and SPM microscopes as the anchor exhibit. It is surrounded by clusters of activities and exhibits that explain quantum mechanics, buckyballs, ferrofluids, biomimicry, top-down and bottom-up building techniques, as well as concepts as scale, cell, atom, self-assembly, MEMs and real life applications and implications of nanotechnology.

The Laberinto’s target audience is youth from middle school and up, who will participate in the Nano Days activities full in Spanish, thanks to the effort of many NISE Net partners who dedicated many hours translating and adapting all the materials into Spanish (.http://www.nisenet.org/catalog/spanish). In the next few weeks the Laberinto staff members will be downloading the Nano Days 2012 Digital kit and using all the available materials for staff training and prepartion of the activities and engaging the audiences to create awareness, involvement and understanding about the nanoscale, engineering and technology.

(Thanks to Amparo Leyman Pino, M. Ed for contributing this article to the blog)