The Geowall News

Geowall News - February 2003

Two a Week
About two GeoWalls are being assembled a week. Please let me know if you have assembled one or know of one being assembled. You may even get a GeoWall T-shirt for reporting it.

Five at a Time
Recently the University of Minnesota had 5 walls running in classes at one time. Three were in the Intro Geology labrooms, one in Education and one in Journalism. Over 1000 students used it. We may have to get a few more walls.

GeoWalls Hit a New Low!
A very basic GeoWall can now be assembled for about $7-8,000. This is mainly due to the Infocus 530 projectors dropping to $2550 each. See www.projectorpoint.com/geowall.htm for more information. We still suggest that you budget $10-15 for your first wall.

GeoWall at the Gordon Research Conference
Steve Reynolds and I will be speaking at the Gordon Research Conference: Visualization in Science and Education on 20-25 July 2003 Queen's College, Oxford, UK. We hope to see you there.

New Global Topography Visualization
Brian Davis and I just produced a shaded relief stereo pair of the ETOPO2 elevation and bathymetry dataset. We have really found it informative for tectonics, oceanography and anywhere you need to examine large scale topography. It can be downloaded from geowall.geo.lsa.umich.edu/edc/StereoPairs/etopo2/ You will need a GeoWall and WallView or Viewer to see it in 3D. They are also very useful in 2D too. Remember to use just the right image in mono.

GeoWalls at AGU
There were 3 GeoWalls at AGU in December. I want to thank everyone who stopped by the Northern Arizona University and Wiggleview Posters, the Scripps booth and the IRIS booth.

Do You Have the Wiggles?
Atul Nayak has developed an Wiggleview, an amazing tool for visualizing seismology data. It really brings a new dimension (no pun intended) to seismology.

Undergraduate Opportunity with the GeoWall
The Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota has an ongoing NSF sponsored internship program centered on "Fluids in the Earth from Surface to Core" Kent Kirkby and I are looking for interns to work on visualizations to be tested and used in labrooms around the US. Travel, room, board and a stipend are all included.

The GeoWall at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry
If you happen to be in Chicago this month stop by to see the GeoWall in action. You'll be able to see Virtual Harlem. The museum is expecting a lot of use. In fact, they bought 30,000 pair of glasses for a 6 week exhibit.

Do you have any news? If so, please contact Paul Morin at lpaul@umn.edu.