From Traditional Spinning to Advanced Electrospinning—Material Engineering Teaching in High School

Abstract

Abstract. In the teaching of material engineering in high school, a comparison between a traditional technique and an advanced one not only can effectively promote the students to understand and grasp the new one, but also can be used as a useful tool to encourage the student to do more self-learning about material processing. In the present report, the students were taught to carry out the advanced electrospinning processes. The difficulties in clear explanations the complicated new process in the class could be easily overcome by the usage of traditional wet spinning as a start point. Based on their past knowledge and experience about the wet spinning processes, the college students majoring in material engineering quickly grasped the essences of electrospinning, discriminated the differences between electrospinning and wet spinning. Some students eagerly went to the experimental laboratory to carry out some experiments about the preparations and characterizations of electrospun polymeric nanofibers. A related start point for comparison is important to transfer knowledge about a new advanced material processing technique to the college students.