Students catch glimpse of Red Planet in 3-D

The Informatics Building was full of students wearing 3-D glasses Monday afternoon. But those in attendance weren't watching a cheap horror movie. Instead, they were viewing the latest three-dimensional images of Mars as part of i-Mars, an educational event held by the School of Informatics, the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Department of Geological Science, the Department of Astronomy and the Advanced Visualization Lab. \nPeople filed in and out of the small lobby of the school's building for all three of the hours the event was in progress.\nJohn Huffman, an adjunct professor in the School of Informatics and the organizer of the event, said turnout was far greater than he expected.\n"I don't know how many people we've had so far, but we bought enough food for 250 people and it was all gone in 45 minutes," he said. "This event has drawn an interesting mix of people, from the campus, as well as from the community because everybody is interested in what's going on with the Mars rover." \nPacked into the relatively small lobby of the Informatics Building were several booths, each highlighting a different project of the three participating departments as they related to space exploration and Mars.\nThe geological sciences department had several exhibits at i-Mars, including one by professor Lisa Pratt. That exhibit highlighted Pratt's own on-going research, studying the rock formations of salt plateaus in Oregon which she says are analogous to Martian rock.\nBut Huffman said the centerpiece of the event was IU's John-e-Box, a portable three-dimensional viewer developed by his son, John Huffman Jr., for the University.\n"The technology isn't novel," he said. "The idea is so effective that IU has begun selling them."\nEric Wernert, manager and senior scientist for Advanced Visual Lab, said IU currently has five John-e-Boxes in Bloomington, three at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis and one at IU-Northwest. \nThe device, which looks much like a big screen TV, cycled through images beamed back to Earth by the Spirit Rover. Viewers watched the images through cardboard 3-D glasses -- the kind often found in movie theaters, to see simulated 3-D effects. \n"The John-e-Box has allowed us to do something like this because it's portable and we can use cheap 3-D glasses," Huffman said. "Before, we only had 3-D viewers in classrooms and the glasses cost $500 each."\nBut, the overarching mission of i-Mars was to help promote the sciences in the community, as well as on campus.\n"It is important to remind students -- that is, all students -- graduate, undergraduate, high school and junior high, how important and exciting sciences are," Pratt said.\nRichard Durisen, chair of the astronomy department, said his department used the event to help publicize other work they were doing.\n"Mars is the occasion, but we came here to show off astronomy's NASA-funded work on gaseous planets," he said. \nHuffman said each of the three involved fields contribute in unique ways to the Mars mission and the study of Mars. For this reason, it was important for IU to host events like this, he said. \n"The problem with the mission to Mars is that there is actually too much data coming back to us," said Jim Sizemore, the undergraduate advisor for the School of Informatics. \nHe said the school works to sift through all of the information and organize it so it is usable to each respective field. He said informatics supplements every field from geological science and astronomy -- as in this case -- to business and social sciences.\nIn addition to the various exhibits, four professors from informatics, geological sciences and astronomy gave 15-minute talks to subjects related to Mars exploration. \nJeff Cummings, a graduate student in astronomy and attendee of the event, said he thought the event was a success. \n"It is important to introduce people to this topic and what scientists are doing."\n-- Contact staff writer Michael Zennie at mzennie@indiana.edu.