The 12th Annual Day of Scholarship is being held today, March 22, 2012, in the Campus Center Event Room and elsewhere around the college to showcase the projects of several students and faculty members.  This is done through the Grants Office.

Though there were several presentations going on, I could only attend the poster displays (for I had to run due to my trip).  There would even be a Disney presentation by Beverly Vaughn around 2pm, but I have to miss it!  Luckily for me, however, when I first walked into the event room and saw all the posters, a grad student I have been acquainted with through his dealings with Stockata caught my attention.  I was swept into the world of Doug Lykes’s project on ‘Investigation of Underwater Acoustics.’  Now I am no Computer Science major or grad student, but what he did have to say was very interesting, for there was a lot of it that I understood.

The main point of the project was to see if the human skull was rigid or flexible.  A way to do this was to see how the skull reacted to sound waves under water and above it.  Doug talked about doing research in Connecticut for this project with machines Woo and John the Baptist.  It was very interesting to see just the wacky names they gave the machines.  As he said, scientists are definitely a little strange.  Especially when they name things!

Doug also talked about bone vibrators that were used to see that when sound vibrated the the bone if the skull was rigid or flexible.  Interestingly enough, he said that when viewed from above, a low sound was able to make the head of a person contract forwards and backwards.  At a bit of a higher tone, it contracts and expands along the sides.  Then when a very high sound his heard, the skull contracts forwards and backwards, then contracts and expands along the sides.  However, this was only observed from the top looking down on a person’s head, so it’s also interesting to wonder if the skull contracts up and down as well.

Doug also had some interesting little fun facts besides those about the machines’ names.  For instance, he told me about how ants secret a little bubble of sugar on each of their feet in order to climb up walls.  He also told me how a gecko climbs up things by making a large amount of force between the hairs on its feet and a wall.  He even told me how when he and the scientists were in Connecticut, they made Da Vinci’s bridge in the middle of a Home Depot with two by fours.  Now while this does not relate to his project, it was all very interesting and taught me a few interesting facts.

Though I did not go to a scheduled presentation, I did get one.  I found it very interesting, especially when we started talking about the ear and vibrations of sound on the bone to make someone hear.  I actually knew a little about that from Psychology.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone, for even though it may seem dull at first, you will actually come out with some interesting knowledge under your belt!