Wednesday, Ju
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Wednesday,Jm
TECHN
THE BATTALION
Photograph collection shows artistic union of physics and aestheti
Stuart Hutson
The Battalion
If the hand is faster than the eye, imagine
taking a photograph of a speeding bullet.
Capturing the previously unseen moments
was the life's work of Massachusetts Institute
of Technology professor Harold "Doc" Edger-
ton until his death in 1990.
Edgerton, who invented the first electric
flash bulb and strobe light, developed a
method of photography which uses a strobe
light to photograph events that take place in as
little time as less than one-millionth of a second,
such as a bullet piercing a balloon or a hum
mingbird flapping its wings.
A collection of Edgerton's work can cur
rently be seen in Texas A&M's J. Wayne Stark
University Center Galleries.
The method isolates an object or event in a
pitch dark room and then exposes a camera's
film and the object or event to a single or series
of flashes. This produces images that previ
ously had been unphotographable by cameras
which had a maximum shutter speed of one -
thousandth of a second.
"A lot of what he showed was very coun-
terintuative," said Catherine A. Hastedt, cura
tor of the gallery. "Most people don't expect to
see the side of an appie that a bullet enters ex
plode just like the side it leaves. Most people
would expect it to implode."
Originally using the method to analyze the
movement of engine parts, Edgerton set the
frequency of a strobe light's flashes to corre
spond to a position that should be occupied
by an engine's part (such as a fan or piston) at
each flash time. If the part moved at an irreg
ular speed, the irregularity would be seen as
a blur on the film.
"He was really the first person to take this
technology and photograph events that people
had only been able to guess about before,"
Hastedt said. "This information was used as a
boost to the efficiency of the machines."
Edgerton then went on to use the method
to capture the motion and use of sports equip
ment by athletes. By capturing "phases" of
motion and pictures of the exact time of im
pact, he was able to analyze how the equip
ment and athlete worked together for a max
imum effect.
"He ended up taking some pictures of some
of the most popular athletes of the '30s and
'40s," Hastedt said. "But it was a trick taking a
photograph of the athlete and object at the
same time while they were both in the dark. He
came up with some pretty ingenious things like
tying wires to a football to trigger the flash at
just the right time."
Capturing the motion of animals was also
an interest for Edgerton. Using the strobe light,
he studied the aerodynamic properties of the
wings of owls in flight and, for the first time,
caught a picture of the "helicopter type" action
of a hummingbird's wing.
"These pictures often won him a feature in
National Geographic," Hastedt said. "He actu
ally showed sides of nature that you would
never think would happen — like a cat's
tongue curling down instead of up when it is
lapping milk."
During World War II, Edgerton was em
ployed by the U.S. government to phot
the individual stages of a nuclear bo:
ploding — from the initial mushroomd
the impact of the shock wave afterward
"Edgerton actually started a bus:
w hich the only thing he did was short
nuclear bomb exploded," Hastedt sai;
pictures resemble cartoons, buthedidiis
that he was employed until theU.S.s;
treaty that banned all above-groundte
Hastedt said that visitors to theexhi:
appreciate both the physics andaestk
sociated with Edgerton's photographs!
him, the pictures were always beaut:
their ability to bring understanding.
"If they want to call it art, they car,
art," Edgerton once said. "But tome,
about electricity."
Reactor research benefits mankind
Stuart Hutson
The Battalion
Most people depend upon the stable qualities of matter
to do their daily work such as build houses, do homework
and drive cars. But, at Texas A&M's own Nuclear Science
Center, physicists are discovering ways to use the unstable
nature of matter to benefit all of mankind.
Boasting a nuclear fission reactor that can generate a
megawatt of electrical power, the facility has generated ad
vancements that range from methods for analyzing centuries
old relics to injectable radioactive isotopes used to treat
forms of cancer.
"Using the core (of the reactor), we can generate technol
ogy that you wouldn't believe," said Dan Reece, director of
A&M's Nuclear Science Center.
The nucleus of an atom consists of positively charged pro
tons and chargeless neutrons. Normally, two protons repel
one another just as two positive magnet ends would. How
ever, when two protons get close enough, a mysterious force
deemed by scientists as the "strong force" overpowers the
repulsion and causes the two particles to attract one another.
During nuclear fission, an extra neutron is added to an
already large nucleus (in this case. Uranium 235), causing
the nucleus to become so large that the protons on two op
posite sides of it are no longer under the attraction caused
by the strong force because they moved too far apart.
The protons pull away from each other, causing the nu
cleus to break into two new nuclei, three neutrons and ener
gy in the form of heat.
Then the emitted neutrons may interact with another un
stable nucleus, resulting in another fission, or they may be
absorbed by a stable nucleus during a process called irradi
ation causing the atom to become an isotope with different
properties.
One of the most widespread uses of the irradiated mate
rial generated by the reactor is the generation of dialysis
membranes for medical use.
To produce a dialysis membrane, a thin sheet of plastic
is irradiated, giving the atoms in the sheet the ability to be
arranged in such a way as to support the insertion of mi
croscopic holes which allow dialysis — or the filtering of
certain items from a liquid. Dialysis often replaces the
functions of a kidney by separating waste products from
a person's blood.
"I would say that approximately one-third of the world's
material for dialysis membranes are produced here," Reece
said.
The center is also using radioactive material to examine
archeological artifacts.
Recently, the remnants of a ship used during La Salle's
1600's exploration of much of the western United States were
analyzed at the center using a technique that coated the rem
nants with an irradiated plastic, preserving them long
enough for analysis.
"This boat had been sitting under water long enough that
as soon as it was pulled up, it would have just crumbled to
dust otherwise," Reece said.
The reactor has a system of tubes similar to those found
at drive-through teller stations at banks which allows mate
rials to be placed into a container, taken to the center of the
reactor core for irradiation and then delivered back to a lab
for analysis.
Reece said the system of tubes is often used to analyze
materials for very small amounts of a particular substance.
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Steps of fusion: 1) a neutron joins a large nucleus; 2)
the added neutron causes protons to repel each oth
er; 3) the nucleus splits, leaving two nuclei, three
neutrons and energy; 4) the resultant neutrons are
absorbed into another nucleus.
Irradiating certain substances makes them highly de
tectable because they react more noticeably during analysis
techniques.
"Someone in Houston killed their next door neighbors
by poisoning them with arsenic," he said. "Fortunately, ar
senic is deposited by the body after death in your nails and
hair. So, someone in the chemistry department used (the
tubes) to send a sample of hair and nails through the core,
which made the arsenic detectable to one part per trillion.
So, they were able to show conclusively how the guy killed
the neighbors."
Vims lab appro
Maureen Kane
The Battalion
The design for a state of the art laboratoiytol
at the University of Texas Medical BranchatGf
(UTMB) was approved Thursday by theUniffl
Texas System Board of Regents.
Construction on the 12,000-foot, $7. :
Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) laboratory is expeo
gin in the spring of 2001.
According to the Center for Disease Cot
Prevention (CDC), BSL4 is the classificationtc:
ing viruses that are highly virulent, often deaf
for which there are no licensed drugs. Thislf
quires the highest safety control.
The lab will be the first on a university camp
one of only two BSL4 labs in the state of Texas
The lab area will occupy 2,000 square feet
maining area will contain high-tech equipmem
stroy any microbes before they can escape
Dr. C.J. Peters, a virologist for CDC in
direct the research at the facility. Peters is thed
CDC's Special Pathogens Branch and hasstufl
outbreaks in South America and Africa, headed
that contained the Ebola virus outbreak in Rest
and has directed viral research in federal labor:
Alana Mikkelsen, a UTMB spokesperso:
UTMB is the best location for the lab.
"We have a world-class center for tropical^
There are lots of researchers studying Hepatitisi 1
tavirus, and other diseases that occur or are re'
ing," Mikkelsen said.
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