Talks cont’d. : Makyoh Images
August 7, 2006 at 8:45 pm | In Science | 4 CommentsMakyoh (Japanese for “Magic Mirror”) are made of highly mirror-polished metal (usually brass) on the front face and engraved on the back face. From what I understand, it is currently commercially available as toys! Also, check out Makyoh in Action. Making these “Magic mirrors” often involved much intuition and skill in the past.
Now the basic idea behind the working of Makyoh is as follows: -
The front mirror side is illuminated by a parallel light beam, and the reflected beam is intersected by a screen. If the surface possesses “irregularities”, the homogeneity of the reflected beam is perturbed and an image that can be related the surface morphology (I would assume some mapping function of sorts) appears on the screen. This “mapped” function is then called magical! In principle, there should be some sensitivity bound for the the roughness of the mirror-side.
The talk focused on attempting to digitize the craftsmanship of the early Makyoh workers using NC machining. All the steps involved in making Makyoh namely forming, casting, taking the pattern away and polishing were performed. Optimal machining conditions were identified first using a single drill hole and later on, using a series of drilled holes.
The reason why I find this interesting is that this problem in a way represented the reverse problem of Makyoh topography which has been used to characterize the flatness of semiconductor wafers for some years now. A scientific work undertaken solely for the purpose of restoring temple architecture seems quite extraordinary.
Digg This!Vegas Part 3: The talks
August 5, 2006 at 7:26 am | In Applied Mechanics, Conferences, Manufacturing | 2 Comments
I.S. Jawahir’s talk:
The talk presented a synthesis of the existing slip-line models in metal cutting theory with emphasis on the work done by their group based on the universal slip-line model. Though most of these metal-cutting models cannot be extended to composite machining due to the inherent differences between metals and composites, it was interesting to see their approach. The most surprising part was the definition of friction coefficient on the tool-chip interface. Instead of the friction coefficient, they have defined a tau/k equivalent term. Due to the excessive temperatures at this interface, this quantity is estimated using regression analysis. This difficulty in establishing a valid friction coefficient is hightened due to the inability to correctly evaluate the temperatures at this interface. Dr. Fang, a previous student of Dr. Jawahir elaborated on this in a subsequent session. He suggested taking the “optimal” coefficient that would yield the best solutions which surely doesnt seem accurate to say the least! Consequently, further research in this field was conferred quintessential. 
Dr. Jawahir’s talk reminded me in many ways of Dr. Ramulu’s lecture, bubbling with energy and enthusiasm, even the jokes! For once I was grateful for the absent speakers, he spoke for a good 40 minutes.
Vegas Part 2: The conference
August 2, 2006 at 2:54 pm | In Conferences, Humor | Leave a CommentAs the Chair Dr. Jay Gunasekera mentioned at the onset, it was a truly international conference. There were researchers from over 40 countries in the fields of Materials Processing and Technology. Though I did not actually meet the authors of the papers that I had “dissected”, it was quite an impressive crowd. Most of them were from academia though the Plenary talks were given by Mr. Robert Noel and Mr. George Mochnal. There were quite a few people missing which led to greater time slots for each speaker. I guess the main reason was difficulty in getting visas etc.
I did spend some time during each talk trying to place their accents. It was quite remarkable, for example, I found out that the Polish usually speak English by writing it down on a piece of paper and then reading that aloud! Most Europeans are so expressive, hand gestures, eyebrows flying about; it was comic at times. My brethren Asians were as always, overly apologetic for taking up breathing space so to speak. Non-Indian Asians have such great dressing sense, and what amazing hairdos! I dont know about being the frontiers of technology (they did have the best laser pointers!) but they have undoubtedly surpassed the rest of the world in fashion. I mean if these countries produce graduate students with such good taste what about the rest of the demographic! I am exaggerating of course, but there is some grain of truth in all this.
Vegas Part 1
July 24, 2006 at 9:06 am | In Travel | Leave a CommentWill be in Las Vegas attending a conference (Advances in Materials and Processing Technology AMPT) for about 5 days starting this saturday. Looking forward to spending some quality time indoors attending talks. Interestingly, there are a few talks on modeling manufacturing processes, though most are numerically based using FEM. Plan to post on some of these talks once I get back.
This will be my second trip to Las Vegas. Though not a great place to visit in summer what with 100+ temperatures and all. The most vivid memory that I have from my previous visit other than the huge buffets is the “Big Jump”, a free fall on top of a tall tower-like casino named “Stratosphere”. Apparently, they have now added a bunch of new rides, the whole ensemble is rightfully christened “Insanity, the ride” http://www.insanityride.com/. I am now too”matured” for this insanity!
Al Pieda
July 16, 2006 at 3:01 pm | In Humor, Politics | 5 CommentsMy daily diet of browsing includes MediaMatters among other news outlets. Off late, Ann Coulter seems to be the most “entertaining” of the bunch surpassing “papa bear” O’reilly.
There was this pie-throwing incident some time back. Apparently, some kids at University of Arizona attempted to pie Ann Coulter while she was going about her liberal-bashing routine. They call themselves Al Pieda. Later while being charged, they stated with profundity, “we were throwing the pies at her ideas not at her” ! (Check out this and this)
Needless to say, this incident fueled a chain-reaction of interviews on cable news networks, its all quite fascinating really!
A new warrior emerges…
July 14, 2006 at 11:56 am | In Random | 3 Comments
My husband is very much into blogging and after years of nagging has succeeded in convincing me that I should blog or I shall die. As you can see, I am quite comfy in the confines of my ever so tiny office and am ready to wreck havoc in blogoverse! VICTORY SHALL BE MINE!!
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