Every spring, I teach a one-semester, graduate-level course on materials transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Thanks to the explosion of interest in nanotechnology, what was once a course primarily for metallurgists on imaging crystallographic defects and x-ray microanalysis now attracts a much broader audience. I have had students in the course from almost all the engineering departments at UW Madison (materials, chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil), from the basic sciences (physics, chemistry, geology), and from other departments (including one from Food Science!). The enrollment in the concurrent laboratory class on TEM operation is similar.

This diverse student body has two consequences. First, the students' background knowledge varies widely. Some have already taken a materials characterization course that included some TEM, but others barely know what a crystal structure is.