Layer by layer

It is often said that we are most creative when we’re young. Mozart was composing music at five. Einstein was 26 in the year he published special relativity. Zuckerberg started Facebook as an undergraduate. The evidence is everywhere you look.

Chemistry must rank as one of the hardest disciplines for young students to access. Equipment is expensive, labs are dangerous and the basic mechanics are complex. As US high school chemistry teacher Matt Ragusa, puts it, ‘it’s not like I can just let the kids loose with the chemicals’.

Matt’s solution has been the build-it-yourself 3D printer, designed by an education outreach team at the University of Illinois.¹ The team is led by Joe Muskin, an education coordinator at Illinois tasked with finding new ways to take the university’s research into classrooms. 

Andrew Turley investigates how this 3D printer has been used to support Matt's teaching and suggests how inspired teachers could create and use a DIY 3D printer.