Dr. Eugene Smith: An Alabamian Renaissance Man by Kasey Hullet for the Crimson White With a bushy brown moustache and gold-rimmed spectacles, Dr. Eugene Allen Smith leaned up against the pine ferry crossing in Tuscaloosa and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was the summer of 1904, and the shiny black paint job on his carriage had become dusty over the 21 years of traveling he had done in it thus far. From a narrow road atop Stone Mountain, […]
Augmented Reality Sandbox
by Bailey, Hannah, and Karmyn, Brookwood Middle School students The Augmented Reality Sandbox is a very special sandbox, because it is a combination of a real sandbox, a virtual topography, using a closed loop of Microsoft Kinect 3D camera, powerful simulation and visualization software, and a data projector. This allows people to create topographic models by shaping real sand. This is augmented into real time by an elevation color map, topographic contour lines, and simulated water. Contour lines are […]
Basilosaurus
by Philip D. Gingerich, University of Michigan Basilosaurus cetoides is the official state fossil of Alabama. In life, this species was a large serpentine sea creature that lived at the end of the Eocene epoch of the Cenozoic, approximately 34 to 35 million years ago. Basilosaurus was first thought to be a reptile but was later identified as an ancient type of whale (Order Cetacea, Suborder Archaeoceti) that grew to 60 or 70 feet (18 to 20 meters) long. Most of what scientists know about Basilosaurus is based on […]