“The NanoExpress is a mobile scientific theme park,” says Gary Harris, electrical engineering professor at Howard University and director of the trailer-turned-laboratory that its scientists use to explain how atomic force and electron microscopes work. “We go wherever people are interested in learning about nanotechnology.”

On 2 April the trailer was parked outside the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC. Inside the building, congressional staffers, science policy advocates, and others watched video clips of role-playing dialog exploring the societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology (see http://www.powerofsmall.org) and used a vibrating joystick to simulate the forces of an atom moving across a surface.

The stop on Capitol Hill was part of the first nationwide NanoDays, a week in which some 100 or so museums and universities carried out educational activities organized by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network. NISE Net was funded by NSF in 2005 and has grown...

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