VT College of Science Magazine Annual 2014 | Page 21

material from the Earth’s crust to core and all the interesting phenomena in between.” Like many others in the College of Science, Ross is currently interested in things nano-related. “We are looking at nanoparticles of metal oxides, such as titanium, cobalt, and iron oxide. We see different structures become stable as the particle size goes down and I’m interested in what happens when you have this huge surface area – what happens on the surface of those particles because they are very reactive. When you leave nanoparticle ́