The Art of Research: Photo Gallery 2016 – 17
The Art of Research photo contest is an opportunity for Queen’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni to showcase their research, scholarly, and artistic work. The competition is aimed at providing a creative and accessible method of sharing and celebrating the ground-breaking research being done by current and past Queen’s community members.
Window on a Window to the Universe
Mark Chen
An underwater camera mounted in the SNO+ (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) neutrino detector captures a snapshot image when the 12-metre diameter acrylic sphere is 85% full. Viewed from below, ropes are seen crisscrossing the top of the sphere extending down (foreground), and each of the shiny cells that are visible is a 20-cm diameter super-sensitive light detector. The water-air interface inside and outside the acrylic spherical tank creates visual distortions as light refracts at the optical boundary. Once full, the upgraded detector turns on in Fall 2016, ten years after the original SNO detector completed its Nobel-prize winning studies.
Location of photograph:
SNOLAB, Sudbury, Ontario
Affiliation:
Faculty, Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
Submission Year:
2016-17
“Non-wetting” Water
Timothy Hutama
This drop sits on a super-hydrophobic surface that is unable to become wet because its affinity to water is less than what water has for itself. Therefore, water forms small, easily movable drops on the surface rather than a single puddle. While these surfaces have been used to keep cities free from graffiti, the Oleschuk group’s research involves using these surfaces in creative ways, such as the determination of beer’s alcohol content or to provide a platform that uniquely manipulates drops using magnets to miniaturize analytical chemical methods.
Location of photograph:
Chernoff Hall, Queen's University
Affiliation:
Graduate Student, Chemistry
Submission Year:
2016-17
Magdalene
Una D’Elia
For over 550 years, the passionate Magdalene has been running with her veil streaming behind, screaming, to the body of Jesus, dead on the ground. This life-size statue, originally painted to mimic flesh and clothes, pushes the limits of the medium, terracotta. Renaissance men and women could walk among Niccolo dell’Arca’s sculptures, feeling as if they were present at this terrible moment in Christian history. Dr. Una D’Elia’s research focuses on such living sculptures, stories of statues coming to life, and people touching, dressing, attacking, and generally treating sculptures as if they were alive.
Location of photograph:
Church of Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna
Affiliation:
Faculty, Art History and Art Conservation
Submission Year:
2016-17
Amphibian from the Inside
Rute Clemente Carvalho
The evolutionary process called miniaturization can lead to morphological changes in body structures. The internal morphology of tiny specimens can be seen/observed using a special staining technique. This method digests the muscles, making them transparent, and colours the bones and cartilages. In the case of this froglet, it has a body size of around 18mm, and features like osteoderms in the skin and hyperossification on the skeleton can be observed. The knowledge of morphological structures can help researchers understand the evolution of the species’ behaviour and ecology of the species, and its phylogenetic relationships with related species.
Location of photograph:
Zeiss stereomicroscope in the laboratory
Affiliation:
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Biology
Submission Year:
2016-17
5000m High Sunset in the Andes
Chris Grooms
Lake Sibinacocha is the 22nd highest lake in the world. Storms from the Amazon push up over the mountains, depositing snow on icecaps feeding high elevation lakes. Andean societies are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climatic change on freshwater systems. Climate change will exacerbate water quality and quantity problems affecting millions of people. Warming in the Andes is occurring at rates nearly twice the global average. The effects on Andean lakes and ecosystems remain largely unknown, despite their importance to people and biodiversity. The objective of Grooms’s research is to assess the impacts of climate change on lakes.
Location of photograph:
Lake Sibinacocha, Cusco, Peru
Affiliation:
Staff, Biology
Submission Year:
2016-17
Tulugak on the Crucifix
Norman Vorano
Dr. Norman Vorano was conducting historical research with Inuit elders in Nunavut in April and May of 2016. One woman recounted the loss of cultural traditions as a result of the changes that happened during the twentieth century, particularly from residential schools, the missionaries, and the waves of southerners who flooded into the Arctic after the Second World War. After they broke for lunch, Vorano stepped outside. The white sky was indistinguishable from the ground. He walked past a towering crucifix erected behind the Catholic Church, on an imposing hill overlooking the community. A raven flew down from the ethereal sky, perched on the Crucifix, and began vocalizing. For Western culture, the raven is a harbinger of death. For Inuit culture, tulugak – raven – is a tricky fellow that symbolizes creation.
Location of photograph:
Pond Inlet, Nunavut
Affiliation:
Faculty, Art History and Art Conservation
Submission Year:
2016-17
Aldonza
Tim Fort
This moment arrives at the end of the staging for the musical number "Aldonza" from The Man of La Mancha – one of two musicals Dr. Tim Fort directed at the Weston Playhouse in Vermont in the summer of 2016. Many of the show's creative team are Broadway veterans, including the designer and the performer playing Aldonza – whose character is pictured ignoring the aggressions of the muleteers as they sing to her in this musical version of the Don Quixote story. Dr. Fort’s research interests lie in lighting and staging, and he has been a producing director at the Weston Playhouse for the past 30 years.
Location of photograph:
Mainstage, Weston Playhouse, Vermont
Affiliation:
Faculty, Dan School of Drama and Music
Submission Year:
2016-17
Evelyn Mitchell and her “Burler”
Laura Murray
Through oral history and archival research, the Swamp Ward and Inner Harbour History Project is revealing the twentieth-century history of two of the oldest neighbourhoods in Kingston, Ontario. Evelyn Mitchell worked at Hield Brothers Woolen Mill in the 1950s when she first arrived in Kingston from Yorkshire. In her interview, she describes in great detail the process by which she did “invisible mending” on the cloth coming out of the looms, picking out and pushing through loose threads. Here she displays the tool she used, a “burler,” which she has saved to this day.
Location of photograph:
Kingston, Ontario
Affiliation:
Faculty, English Language and Literature (Affiliated with Cultural Studies)
Submission Year:
2016-17
Phantasie Ist Alles
Julia Partington
Although I am an English major, I also study other languages and was fascinated by this piece of graffiti that I found on Museum Island in Berlin. Translated from German to English, it says, “Imagination is everything, it is the preview to the coming events of life.” This was said by Albert Einstein, and while his discipline is physics, different from mine, we both see the beauty of creativity. His creativity is in the stars, and mine is in language and literature. Arts and science are bound together in this short expression. A treasure waiting on Museum Island for me to embrace and understand.
Location of photograph:
Museum Island, Berlin, Germany
Affiliation:
Undergraduate Student, English Language and Literature
Submission Year:
2016-17
Polypyrrole
Danesh Roudini
The film morphology of electrochemically synthesized conducting polymers is widely dependent on electropolymerisation conditions. Some factors, like type of anions, solvent, and deposition rate, have a great influence on the final polymer quality and morphology. The SEM image shows electrochemically synthesized polypyrrole film on platinum electrode. Polypyrrole has high electrical conductivity and good environmental stability and has potential applications such as sensors, electrodes for rechargeable batteries, corrosion-protecting materials, electrochromic devices, and membranes.
Location of photograph:
Kingston University, UK
Affiliation:
Faculty, Bader International Study Centre - BISC
Submission Year:
2016-17
Old is Gold
Alamjeet Kaur Chauhan
The multifunction nerve stimulator S8 was invented in the mid-20th century. It was commonly used to inject current into muscles and cardiac cells to elicit a response. Using frog muscles and hearts, an Italian physician, Luigi Galvani, showed that electricity was inherent in organic tissue. Over the last fifty years or so electro-therapy has shown a very rapid development. This equipment is still functional. I am using the stimulator to send electrical impulses into neurons and record subsequent changes in nerve activity characterized by the movement of charged molecules across the cell membrane.
Location of photograph:
Botterell Hall, Queen's University
Affiliation:
Graduate Student, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences
Submission Year:
2016-17
Antiquity, Austerity, Democracy
Theodore Christou
June 25, 2015. A referendum is scheduled for Greeks to decide if they will accept the economic bailout conditions imposed by its creditors. Banks have been shuttered. Cash withdrawals have been limited for weeks. Tired of austerity, the citizenry votes 61% in favour of rejecting bailout conditions. In short order, the Greek government signs a new memorandum accepting more austerity measures. In the foreground, a Roman-era administrative block. In the background, a protest and blockade. The protesters chant: “If we act, speak, and think as they wish, we are condemned to live as they demand. Live chaotically.”
Location of photograph:
Thessaloniki, Greece
Affiliation:
Faculty, Faculty of Education (Cross-Appointment, History)
Submission Year:
2016-17
A Sensing Micro-Christmas Tree
Hannah Dies
My research is focused on using electric fields to assemble nanoparticles into micro-sized structures to enhance detection through surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. In the image shown, silver nanoparticles have been assembled into a Christmas tree like structure. The structure offers greater than a million times enhancement of the original Raman signal and can be used to detect analytes such as bacteria, illicit drugs, and proteins as parts per billion concentrations. The assembly process occurs in minutes and requires little training to perform. The process is inexpensive and a patent for the process has recently been filed on this revolutionary technique.
Location of photograph:
Queen’s University's Facility for Isotope Research-ESEM
Affiliation:
PhD/MD Student, Chemical Engineering
Submission Year:
2016-17
Mesas, ridges and pits on a copper surface
Benedict Drevniok
The image was taken with a scanning tunneling microscope that was built by Benedict Drevniok in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy at Queen’s University. It depicts a copper surface that had been bombarded with Argon atoms. This creates a surface that is pitted (dark blue color). The originally flat surface ends up with this interesting structure. Material is displaced from the pits, creating mesas and ridges (gold color). The steps on the surface are only one atom in height. The image shows a region that is approximately one micrometre in width and height.
Location of photograph:
Stirling Hall, Queen’s University
Affiliation:
PhD Student, Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
Submission Year:
2016-17
Delta Wing Approach
Joshua Galler
In this image a flat-plate delta wing is approaching a laser sheet shining through lenses below. The wing was mounted in a water tank and is being towed at approximately 1 m/s. The water has been seeded with tiny reflective particles so that as the wing passes through the laser sheet, a camera can film the motion of these particles and later process them to determine the velocity field of the trailing wake. This is called particle image velocimetry, or PIV. Understanding the behaviour of the wake can shed light on delta wing performance in other situations.
Location of photograph:
McLaughlin Hall, Queen's University
Affiliation:
Graduate Student, Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Submission Year:
2016-17
Hunter
Stéfy McKnight
This photograph is an image of a hunting camera used by rural landowners to protect their property from human and non-human trespassers. This photograph proves that citizens are repurposing surveillance technologies for their own security and usage. The research that contextualizes this photograph argues that CCTV cameras and contemporary surveillance practices have inspired citizens to use unique methods of surveillance for their own needs.
Location of photograph:
Markstay, Ontario
Affiliation:
Graduate Student, Cultural Studies
Submission Year:
2016-17
Christ in Majesty, Hereford Choir Screen, George Gilbert Scott 1862
Matthew Reeve
I was recently invited to participate in a collaborative project with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Paul Mellon Centre to publish the first account of the great screen by Scott and Skidmore (now in the V&A). After presenting our preliminary work in summer 2016, a handful of experts were allowed unprecedented access to the screen. Standing precariously on a chair with one leg and leaning on my colleague from Berkeley, this photo of the central Christ in Majesty was a lucky shot captured with my iPhone.
Location of photograph:
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
Affiliation:
Faculty, Art History and Art Conservation
Submission Year:
2016-17
Collateral research
Joan Schwartz
A walk through the MET is an exercise in experiential learning, no matter what one’s area of interest. Every visit to New York, I make my pilgrimage to the great 19th century painting Heart of the Andes by Frederic Edwin Church in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year, I strode past the large-scale medieval sculptures, altarpieces, tapestries, and furniture on my way to the Robert Lehman Collection, but then Ack! the Collection was temporarily closed! Disheartened, I turned around and started back through the Medieval Gallery when I was struck by this sculpture in raking light.
Location of photograph:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA
Affiliation:
Faculty, Art History and Art Conservation
Submission Year:
2016-17
Wonky Air Bubbles
Frank Secretain
This mosaic features air bubbles (2-2.5 mm in radii) rising through water and sequences of others in the background. Bubbles pass through a sound field whose waves cause non-linear interactions between the air-water interface, which produce surface irregularities and pinch-off smaller bubbles. From the bottom to the top of the photograph bubbles are formed, rise, oscillate, and breakup into smaller bubbles (time differences between consecutive vertical images is 5.5 ms). The breakup is efficacious for minimizing potential air emboli during open-heart surgery.
Location of photograph:
Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Queen’s University
Affiliation:
PhD Student, Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Submission Year:
2016-17
Heart in a cubic
Hongbing Yu
Second phase particles in alloys are important for the properties of metallic materials. The morphology and chemical composition of the particles are critical for researchers to understand the natures and the roles of these particles. With cutting-edge electron microscope, we can map the distribution of the alloying elements over a particle. A very beautiful particle was observed in a special steel during an experiment which made it appear like a little heart of zirconium was enclosed in a vanadium cubic box.
Location of photograph:
Reactor Material Testing Lab, Queen's University
Affiliation:
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Submission Year:
2016-17
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Queen's Art of Research photo contest is an opportunity for Queen’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni to showcase their research, scholarly, and artistic work.
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Queen's Art of Research photo contest is an opportunity for Queen’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni to showcase their research, scholarly, and artistic work.
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