 Hello and welcome to Honors Nanotechnology and Research. This course is designed to introduce you to the technologies, techniques and tools of nanoscience and nanotechnology. This course will prepare you for doing more advanced work in nanoscience and nanotechnology at the university level. And my conversations with several researchers at local universities, including Duke and UNC, gives me confidence that we have the right program for you. We'll be looking at topics such as nanoparticles and nanofibers, the spectroscopy tools used in nanoscience, and topics such as the use of nanomaterials for sunscreens, semiconductors and other nano-electronic devices. The size of nanoscale materials is at the molecular level, so this course will have a lot of chemistry in it, and you'll need to have had or be in a good chemistry course. However, many of the chemistry concepts that you'll need aren't typically covered in most high school programs, so we'll teach you all the chemistry you need to know. We'll approach nanoscience and nanotechnology from a computational perspective, so sort of like learning how to drive in driver's ed, you'll learn how to start the software, drive it down the road, and use it to get to where you want to go. If you want to learn what's under the hood, so to speak, you can take computational chemistry as a senior in the fall. This course here is a research course, so you'll get a chance to read a number of scientific journal articles and you'll write at least three scientific papers, including one at the end of the course that's your own idea. This course has a significant level of academic rigor, so you're going to need a substantial work ethic, intellectual curiosity, and time management skills to succeed in this course. I anticipate that you're going to need 10 to 14 hours a week of dedicated time for this course, so make sure that you have the time that you'll need. I'm really excited to be teaching this course, and I look forward to working with and for you in the spring.