Machine Tooling Analogy

Tom Perkins asked me to record and edit some video footage of a Electronic Machine Tooling that was shaping a machine part. He wanted to use the video as an analogy how this machine tooling will be similar to how science will be able to "tool" DNA on nano-scale. The hardest part about this video was slimming the video down from 5 minutes to 30 seconds. The robot machine was pretty cool. You just program the machine with some code and an autocad model file and the machine goes to town on the piece. I want one now, but apparently they are kinda expensive and cumbersome to store. The coolest part about the video shoot itself was how the metal shards actually shot out right towards the camera. Fortunately the metal shards didn't damage the lens or the camera.

• Client: Tom Perkins Group

Mental to Experimental

I worked with Fellow John Bohn and Ed Meyer who do a lot of theoretical work, but they were getting a lot of attention from researching the physics of a baseball and how humidity affects the spin of a baseball. John wanted to take theories about this subject and put it to experimental test and was trying to involve pitchers from the major league baseball team "The Rockies" in Denver. He was doing several presentations and wanted some pictures to help supplement his presentation. The photo shoot was rather fun because John Bohn is a really nice guy and has a pretty healthy sense of humor. He really enjoyed over exaggerating the experimental environment of his project because everybody knows that he is a theorist and theorist don't really have a budget for expensive lab environments.

If you are curious about John Bohn research about this subject, check out his pdf on his group's webpage here.

• Client: John Bohn Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

BEC controlled by Feshbach physics

I worked with Juan Pino from the Deborah Jin group, and he was having a hard time trying to figure out a visual that would explain his research clearly. Of course he could have pull out his hard science data, but we wanted to make the information more accessible. I have been inspired by the Higgs Mechanism illustration which was a series of abstract cartoon illustrations that explains the concept almost perfectly. Explaining the Higgs Mechanism is not an easy thing to do and doing it visual was probably pretty tough to conceptualize initially. Check out the Higgs Mechanism illustration here and you get what I mean.

Anyways I thought Juan's concept would be the perfect testing ground for trying to do an abstract cartoon to make the idea of behind the science more clear and accessible. So I did a lot playing around with Illustrator, Photoshop, and just plain old pencil and paper to come up with a system of characters. Essentially these are little Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) hanging with a few "excited" atom wondering around. Juan's experiment basically cause the BECs to be more interactive with each other by using the Feshbach techniques.

The illustration took a little while hammer out all the exacting details from Juan, but it was a fun project. I even involved my assistant Mohamad Zainuddin to help me draw all the arms and legs. Everybody in the office was curious what we were doings because they kept seeing the sketches of body parts all over multiple desk.

• Clients: Deborah Jin Group, Juan Pino


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Microfluidics Device

Photo shoot for Ralph Jimenez's and Emily Gibson's microfluidics device. Ralph wanted some experiment apparatus shots for a grant proposal that he was putting together. I did a 3D rendering of one of the experiment's functions a littel while ago, so it was kinda cool to see the actual device that was performing the experimental process that I visualized already before.

• Clients: Ralph Jimenez Group, Emily Gibson


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

X-ray Frequency Comb

I worked with Thomas Schibli and Dylan Yost from the Jun Ye Group on updating a laser schematic graphic that my predecessor created a few years ago which can be seen here. I just finished up a laser schematic graphic for Margaret Murnane a week before, so I was excersing a common style with the angle and color. I did add a new touch which was to add direction indicator arrows for this graphic because I want to emphasis that light is being repeating bouncing light in a cycle that is increasing. I wanted to make the graphic earlier so that it could have been used for Thomas's presentations, but my work load got in the way of having the graphic completed sooner. This schematic graphic actually represents several experiments, so I am probably going to be adapting this image more in the future, and this one might be turned into an animation.

• Clients: Jun Ye Group, Dr. Thomas Schibli, Dylan Yost


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article