SHAPESHIFTING FROM MIT TO THE CLASSROOM

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July 22, 2024

For information on admission to Notre Dame Prep, please click here. 

Notre Dame Prep science teacher spends a week at MIT in a metallurgical and materials science workshop in an effort to make material research, fabrication and "self-healing T-1000 Frankensteel" more accessible to her students. 

Last week, high school teachers from throughout the United States and Canada converged on the Massachusetts Institution of Technology campus in Cambridge, Mass., to design and make Frankensteel, a self-healing material inspired by T-1000, the villain in the Terminator 2: Judgement Day movie. 

Among the 12 science and STEM educators was Louise Palardy, Notre Dame Prep chemistry teacher, STEM specialist and manager of the school's robotics center. 

The annual Materials Genome Camp, a weeklong workshop to educate teachers in materials science and engineering, is managed by the multi-institutional Center for Hierarchical Materials Design, the ASM Materials Education Foundation and by professors at MIT's Materials Research Laboratory (MRL).
 
This year, Palardy and her fellow teachers were tasked with creating metal alloys, including a “self-healing” metal — which can self-repair damage it sustains — using tin and bismuth. While not a true steel alloy, the course sponsors have affectionately adopted the name Frankensteel for its cobbled-together metallurgical creation.

Palardy said she can't wait to relay what she learned to her students this fall.

"I am so excited to add the information about material design, fabrication and testing to honors chemistry this year," she said. "We spent a lot of time in MIT's foundry creating not only Frankensteel, but other different metallic alloys for testing and analysis."

The course is aligned with the Materials Genome Initiative, an Obama-era federal effort to design and manufacture materials faster and cheaper than has traditionally been done. To reach that objective, the teachers designed their new materials using CALPHAD, a methodology for predicting properties of multicomponent metals such as alloys.

Most of the work that was done at the camp can be recreated in a high school lab, and all of the teachers received information on the software they used, giving them more ways to introduce materials science to their students. 

"It was a lot of work, but well worth it since it's still another way we as teachers can make science more interesting and approachable," said Palardy, who's been a fixture on the NDP campus for nearly 20 years. "And to give them ideas and provide very obvious answers to, 'What's the point of science?' 

"What could be better than that?!"

 

For information on admission to Notre Dame Prep, please click here.

Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org

About Notre Dame Preparatory School
"At Notre Dame Prep, we inspire our students to become the best versions of themselves. We challenge them through an experience of academic excellence, focused on active, project-based learning. We invite them to explore a world of opportunities beyond the classroom. We guide them as they grow in spirituality within a community strong in its Catholic and Marist identity."

Notre Dame Preparatory School is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. Notre Dame Preparatory School's upper school enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame Prep's middle and lower schools enroll students in pre-kindergarten through grade eight. All three schools are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDP is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the National Association of Independent Schools. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School, visit the school’s home page at www.ndprep.org.