Crystallography

CWRU MATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING + IC, 2018

VIEWING 3-D STRUCTURES AS HOLOGRAMS

CWRU School of Engineering Associate Professor Alp Sehirlioglu teaches crystallography – the science of understanding the atomic structure of materials, like the quartz crystal that enables a watch to keep time precisely.

Sehirlioglu approached the IC with the opportunity to let students view these complex 3-D structures in holographic 3-D, versus the 2-D representation found in textbooks.

Working with a student programmer, Sehirlioglu worked out the fundamental equations and folding interactions he wanted to represent visually. Next, the IC was able to bring this code into a shared classroom framework so students could view the materials together in a series of Sehirlioglu’s classes held at the IC.