This website is a PREVIEW of a forthcoming sci-art installation
Presenting Science, Artfully
What is Heat? / October 2016
A few years ago I was thinking a great deal about time. To be honest, time is something I had pondered for decades. But this more recent bout of thought led me to consider the fundamental nature of what we term energy. In 2009, with a spark of inspiration while brushing my teeth, I imagined a multitude of small balls, all in agitation, but all kept separated somehow. Two years ago I developed my first solution to that problem, and last year designed a better one.
But first the science. Consider what heat is in everyday, commonsense terms. It's energy of course, and we are usually aware of it as infrared radiation warming our skin. We see it when a metal gets hot; it glows, it expands. The atoms are trying to free themselves from their neighbours. Up to the point the metal begins to liquefy, they are moving about like crazy but still held in place. What is heat? Answer: vibration. If you want to nitpick, heat manifests as vibration. Under energetic conditions atoms are receiving and shedding energy, expanding as their electrons go into higher energy states and contracting as they shed energy.
A portrayal of heat, not time, is the principle concept of my installation. And its in the course of research I got new insight into entities termed phonons. A very recent New Scientist article (Oct '16) described phonons as quasi-particles that shuttles energy between atoms. This idea adds an extra dimension to my artwork.
But first the science. Consider what heat is in everyday, commonsense terms. It's energy of course, and we are usually aware of it as infrared radiation warming our skin. We see it when a metal gets hot; it glows, it expands. The atoms are trying to free themselves from their neighbours. Up to the point the metal begins to liquefy, they are moving about like crazy but still held in place. What is heat? Answer: vibration. If you want to nitpick, heat manifests as vibration. Under energetic conditions atoms are receiving and shedding energy, expanding as their electrons go into higher energy states and contracting as they shed energy.
A portrayal of heat, not time, is the principle concept of my installation. And its in the course of research I got new insight into entities termed phonons. A very recent New Scientist article (Oct '16) described phonons as quasi-particles that shuttles energy between atoms. This idea adds an extra dimension to my artwork.
Magnetic Monopoles. Sort of.
How do I keep my agitated spheres away from each other? Magnets, obviously, using like polarity outwards throughout. But that produces another problem - how to keep them close at the same time. The simplest nucleae installation is a flat array. I learned that I couldn't have spheres with a complete halo of like polarity, because it seems that the magnets will demagnetise. But I can have a partial halo, a torus in fact. A sphere with a magnetic torus. In a flat array they will stay separated. To keep them together, all I need do is hang them with wire from a common centre, and gravity provides the force that keeps them in proximity. Gravity provides 'tension'. The array is a hexagonal fan - its how the spheres will organise themselves quite naturally. How flat it is will be determined by the height of the hanging space; the higher the space, the flatter the array can be.
Have a look at the image in the GALLERY. I'll explain some more there.
Have a look at the image in the GALLERY. I'll explain some more there.
Get In Touch
Click the button below if you want to drop me a line, or click CONTACT in the top bar.
|