Update!!

Check out our clip on this weeks science Friday (May 4th, 2012) http://www.sciencefriday.com/ .  We are very honored and excited to be on Science Friday again this coming week.  The feature is about spinning spheres (eggs) in shallow puddles of water and milk.  We have been working on the project for nearly 18 months and we are about to submit our first paper on the subject.  Stay tuned for a publication, but for now we hope you will enjoy our video clip on sciencefriday.  During the interview process Flora Lichtman talked to Alex Hornstein, who had the original idea for the study in 05′ or 07′ or sometime ago.  He reminded her of a clip of me as Marine Man in a movie he shot for our lab.  You can watch it here or below.

Update!!  I got this email from Alex and I thought it was really interesting.

`My high school teacher wrote me back–it turns out that the original egg photo I saw on his wall was done by one of his students, Jared Hill, using water mixed with elmer’s glue.  Here are some of Jared’s photos: http://hiviz.org/hsi/galleries/aapt/contest2003.htm

http://www.aapt.org/programs/contests/pc03full.cfm?Meeting=SM03&Category=Contrived&Placing=1

Jared was in my physics class in high school.  I looked him up on facebook and wrote to ask what inspired it, and I just heard back today.  Here’s what he said:

Hey Alex! What’s up. I heard about that science Friday thing from Dr. Winters and Dr. Kolena. I was really happy to hear about that. Dr. Winters really drove that egg project. Honestly, I saw those pictures from previous years and I loved them. The entire reason I asked Dr. Winters about that project was because I wanted a picture. We sat around one day throwing out ideas and looking at other projects in high speed photography and I think Dr. Winters brought out that article on the physics of the spinning egg. I wish I’d had the idea, but I can’t take credit. Mostly Dr. Winters, and some really original people who first wrote that article. The funny thing is we took photos all year and they looked horrible. We tried all kinds of different lighting conditions and angles. Finally, on the last day of school during that talent show / presentation (whatever it was) we got something that was far, far better than any other picture we’d taken.

…and the saga continues.  That’s about as far as I’m going to dig.  But somewhere out in the void, many degrees of separation away, there’s a nerdy dude with a high speed camera who was sitting bored at his breakfast table, looked over at a hardboard egg and glass of milk, and had a wonderful idea.

I think the original article can be found at G. Gutierrez, “Fluid flow up the wall of a spinning egg,” American journal of physics, 66, 442 (1998).

–me

We have been working towards methods of determining the positions of birds in 3D space as they fly using our Synthetic Aperture imaging approach.  Pigeons are particularly easy to film because we can trick them into coming in for food, and then scaring them.  These preliminary videos help understand the potential this approach may have in determining the trajectory motion of these birds in space and time.  Thanks to Kennedy Plaza for giving us permission to park there!  Oh and thanks to all the local characters that kept asking us what we were doing hoping to get on television!  Please enjoy these two videos.

Camera setup in Kennedy Plaza

Cameras are setup out of the back of the Isuzu Trooper in the foreground. 9 cameras are spaced about 15 feet apart on tripods. The computer and cabling are in the truck and the generator is outside.

Sample pigeon trajectories extracted from the data shown below.

Two students of St. Mathews of the Pacific Palisades, Pippa and Natalie, recently finished their website / report of some hydrophobic and hydrophilic experiments.  A few months ago they emailed me about a set of experiments they wanted to do similar to the ones I performed for my PhD thesis.  Their report is well written and aside from some rather large claims about drag reduction pretty accurate.  I like how much fun they seemed to have had and was surprised by how well written and well presented their work was.  I felt it was really accessible to a large audience.  You can find their website here.

Thanks Pippa and Natalie!

We were highlighted in the Provo Daily Herald last week!  I was in Rhode Island so haven’t seen a copy of the paper yet, but the online version looks pretty cool!  We spent the day with the photographer talking about high speed imaging and waxing philosophical about how students learn, what gets people excited about science and what the purpose of the Splashlab is.  It was all done while we were filming a short film for BYU on their home page, where we focused on what makes for a good skipping stone.  We took the Waboba balls to the lake too and had a lot of fun shooting them over 100 meters!!!

Our Oil in Alcohol droplets were featured in the Out of The Blue section of the BYU magazine this month!  The full 2 page spread looks pretty good.  Now that I think about it I should have advertised for more PhD students!  Here’s the link.

Jesse recently attended the Physics of Sports conference at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France.  He reported that he had a great time and that our paper on the Waboba was well received.  You can view a copy here if you are interested.  This Waboba project just keeps getting more and more fun.

Dale Tree and I were recently asked to do an interview with BYU radio.  It was fun to talk about flames and imaging at 6:30 am!  I think the interview went well.  It was fun to be on a radio show, but I have to admit that I think the things we are doing are more conducive to visual stimuli.  You can listen to the transcript here.

I am pleased to announce that our ONR STEM proposal entitled “Peer-Instructive Instrumentation Development for SeaPerch: Undergraduates Teaching K-12 Through Hands-on Experience” was funded by ONR!  Here is a link to their announcement.  If you live in Provo and your kids are in middle school or high school or you have a course from me this coming year, you are in luck.  You will be building the SeaPerch platform and a whole bunch of instruments for probing different environments!  http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2011/STEM-Sponsoring-Scholars-Science-Winners.aspx

Discovery Channel Canada aired a piece on the water bouncing ball today on their daily series Daily Planet.  When I get a link I will put it up here, but for now you will have to just hope you were watching the Discovery Channel at 5pm today… in Canada!

I now have a link…. enjoy!

http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/december-2011/daily-planet—december-07-2011/#clip581656

The New Scientist TV did a very nice piece on the Waboba video we submitted to APS this year.  Their coverage can be found here, and it is exciting to have sound over top of the video.  Our video entry could not have sound as part of the contest, so it is nice to hear Caitlin Stier’s voice.  Thank you Caitlin.