I hook them into thinking. Over the past few decades,biologists and biochemists have developed marvelous skills of isolating and crystallizing large protein molecules. Viruses are typically large agglomerations of protein molecules, often composed of hundreds of thousands of atoms. These structures can then be used to design a drug that will block the viral attack. Switching from the intangible to the tangible, I take the visitors to an experimental station to see and touch equipment and to imagine that they are visiting scientists.
Protein crystals are usually very small, often only the width of a human hair.
For instance, the equipment needed to focus an x-ray beam onto the small crystals was designed and built by our staff. Delicate protein crystals are crudely similar to hamburger in that the intense x-ray beams cause them to rot. This problem was overcome by inventing a way to freeze crystals with liquid nitrogen while they re being irradiated. Finally, of course, computers help analyze the x-ray pictures and generate the atomic models and pictures. I wonder if they re impressed by all of this.