Sensing Spirals takes third

The 2013 SMART contest winners were just announced and I am pleased to have a third place winner in visual interest and impact. Take a look at all the winners here.

Art for Science Sake

I entered a few of the math photos in the Art for Science Sake contest sponsored by The Los Alamos Commerce and Development Corporation.

Feel free to go vote if you have a moment!

Edit: Just found out I am a finalist!

The blog is back!

A short break while I finished up the last my graduate school requirements .... and I am back! Now a photo tribute to my research to mark the occasion.

The Feigenbaum constant

I had previously blogged about my new series on faith and math, but today seemed like a good day to post another picture in this series.

This piece is about the Feigenbaum constant, another transcendental number. Every chaotic system that corresponds to this description will bifurcate at the same rate. Feigenbaum's constant can be used to predict when chaos will arise in such systems before it ever occurs.

Tiny Little Droplets

Another wonderful collaboration photo. This picture shows a water drop impacting a superhydrophobic surface. This was part of a poster titled "Size Dependence of Drops Impacting Superhydrophobic Surfaces", by D.A. Bolleddula, H.E. Dillon, A. Aliseda, P.S. Bhosale, and J.C. Berg.

Ferrofluid droplets

This image shows the sequence of a ferrofluid (magnetic fluid) impacting a superhydrophobic surface. The video that explains the phenomena was a recent submission to a fluid conference by Danny Bolledula, Prasad Bhosale, myself, and other collaborators. The video gives an overview of ferrofluids and the jetting phenomena we observed.

Math+photo+coffee = fun

My photography is the current month exhibit at the Zoka Cafe in the University District. The math photography is featured, well worth a trip for the lovely coffee alone ....

Exploring Faith and Math

I am starting a new series exploring faith and mathematics. Many scientist write about the ties they see between religion and mathematics including Carl Sagan, John C. Polkinghorne (my favorite) and many more.

My series is based on transcendental numbers and scientific constants. Hopefully they are a thought-provoking look at your own faith, whether you believe in God, science, or both.

This image is called "the transcendental nature of prayer". None of the 5 trillion digits of pi calculated to date repeat. Can we quantify prayer?

soup norm

This is another from the math images collection. If you are not familiar the supremum norm is often referred to as the "sup norm", like a cute little math nickname. There is really nothing cute about a norm but there is supreme irony.

We had tons of fun making the triangle inequality in alphabet soup, close up is below.

Golden Spiral

The golden spiral may be approximated mathematically by the Fibonacci spiral and also by the rectangles shown below, but the math is actually the golden spiral in polar coordinates. Larger version is available for purchase with the other math art.

Inside the UW Wind Tunnel

The fluids lab at UW has a wind tunnel that is used to study droplets (think clouds). I recently took some photos of the system and the graduate students who run it. They have lasers! More information about the lab is on the UW website.

The Heat Transfer Lab

These hot spheres (balls) may look familiar to many of you. Lumped capacitance is the best!

Boeing Flight Museum

The Race Car

Building a race car.

A few portraits of scientists

They are pondering the meaning of life and thinking deep thoughts about navier-stokes.

Water Droplet - extra small

This is a 2.5 mm diameter water droplet as it impacts a surface. More math and science compositions in this gallery.

How Engineers See Fruit