|
|||||
|
MUSKEGON — Expect the unexpected with this year’s Summer Celebration Fourth of July fireworks. A new company, American Fireworks of Ohio, is doing them and the company has its own term for what will be lighting up the sky (and Muskegon Lake) — a pyro-musical. “It’s something that will be really amazing,” [...] Editor’s note: University of Michigan junior Ellora Gupta is writing a regular summer series called “Passionate People.” Her goal is to inspire others and her column will cover uplifting stories about Ann Arbor locals who are striving to achieve their goals and passions.
Mike Gould has a very unique passion: playing with lasers. As a member of Illuminatus 2.1, he puts together laser shows. “Illuminatus 2.1, a laser light show, is the driving creative force for my life,” Gould said. The history of Illuminatus stretches back to 1972 when Gould began constructing laser devices as a hobby with partner Wayne Gillis. Gould calls this period of time “Illuminatus 1.0,” during which they performed very basic light shows using one laser. “We did light shows up through the 70s,” he said. “It kind of petered out because, really, the only place you could do light shows was in discos, and we were not into disco.” During the 80s and 90s, however, Gould found it difficult to popularize the lasers. It was not until 2009 that Gould resumed his activity with the laser light shows. He was asked to perform at Penguicon, an open source software convention. This was the beginning of Illuminatus 2.0, during which he built the first generation of laser lunchboxes: laser devices that had been embedded into metal lunchboxes and could be projected out from within. Continue reading Mike Gould sheds light on his passion for Illuminatus 2.1, a laser light show Dates: May 29-31, 2010 Location: Memorial Lawn Stone Mountain park honors our troops and their families, in a three-day celebration of American spirit at Atlanta’s largest Memorial Day Weekend celebration. Enjoy the park with an all-attractions Adventure Pass which will provide entry to all Stone Mountain Park attractions including Sky Hike, one of the nation’s largest adventure courses set high [...] LOBO electronic recently premiered its first interactive laser show at Germany’s Holiday Park. LOBO’s Alex Hennig said the show worked better than expected, with thousands of audience members eagerly responding to the commands of a laser-projected girl. The show, performed this summer in the theme park’s Aqua Stadium, [...] SCIENTISTS are using the world’s largest laser in an attempt to build a star on Earth.
The laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is roughly the size of three American football fields, and those in charge of it aren’t joking when they say they’ll create a tiny sun in the next few months. It’s called the National Ignition Facility and it’s all about finding the holy grail of energy production – nuclear fusion – a high-energy reaction that would theoretically provide limitless energy for humanity. In a nutshell, the laboratory hopes to split its laser beam up into 192 beams, then fire them at a tiny target wrapped in gold that’s smaller than a fingernail. Continue reading World’s largest laser fires up for attempt to build new star on Earth Patricia Daukantas For almost as long as visible-wavelength lasers have existed, artists have been inspired by their potential to create stunning visual displays.As the clock ticked toward the end of the first half of Super Bowl XLIV, two teams huddled on the sidelines, waiting for the signal. Each had a single objective and a tight timeframe for achieving their goal.
But they weren’t looking to score a touchdown. Rather, these teams were the special-effects technicians for the halftime show. They had nine minutes to ensure that 16 powerful lasers were hooked up and safely aligned to a 40-section platform in preparation for a laser show to accompany the performance of the rock group the Who. More than 100 million people watched the Feb. 7, 2010, performance on television, making it one of the most-viewed laser shows ever. The special effects teams set up two “laser compounds,” one at each 35-yard line on the New Orleans Saints’ side of the gridiron. Each compound had two 50-W Nd:YAG pulsed lasers, cooled with a recirculating-water chiller, plus two air-cooled, full-spectrum units: a 25-W optically pumped semiconductor (OPS) laser and a 13-W diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) RGB laser. Laser shows have always held a universal appeal. People from all over the world have enjoyed them at planetariums, concerts, corporate meetings and other venues. In the United States, outdoor laser displays dance across the faces of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington and Stone Mountain in Georgia. They illuminate the pyramids of Giza in Egypt and the night sky above the Hong Kong business district. Coherent beams of color formed pictures of Olympic athletes against the side of the Sydney Opera House in 2000, and, at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, 20 lasers were used in a nightly light show in which people from around the world controlled the beams through public Internet access. How laser shows workThe stunning visual effects of laser shows rely on some of the simplest optical equipment and principles: moving mirrors and the effect known as persistence of vision—which refers to the afterimage that persists when a point of light moves faster than the eye can react to it. The afterimage lasts for roughly 1/25 of a second. |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2010 NewAje - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
Recent Comments