While other students their age were off on their summer vacations, Shira Billet and Dora Sosnowik, seniors at the Stella K. Abram High School for Girls in Hewlett Bay Park, New York, were putting time in at the lab. Their work paid off last December when they placed first in the team category of the 2001 Siemens Westing-house Science and Technology Competition. They shared the $100 000 prize for their viscometer for ultrathin films.
In Billet and Sosnowik’s viscometer, two distinct layers of liquid polymers are painted on a silicon wafer, with the more viscous film on top. The difference in surface tension between the two films causes the upper layer to dewet, a process similar to water beading into droplets on the hood of a car. The dewetting forms holes in the upper film, exposing the lower film, whose viscosity is then calculated from the rate of hole growth....
