Whispering Galleries and Detecting Viruses

Do you remember when you were a young child and loved to stand under a dome and talk or even yell? The sound reverberated and made you feel very important! (Or as important as a 5 year old can feel.) The mystery of your amplified self was fun and thrilling.

Now researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, MO have gone many steps further than your simple childhood experimentation. 

Professor Nan Yang, PhD of the Nano/Micro Photonics Laboratory, Electrical and Systems Engineering Department at Washingtong Univ. has created an optical whispering gallery. It makes use of light "to interact with a single particle over thousands to millions of times to greatly enhance interactions between light and the sub-wavelength particle." The awesome sensitivity of this tiny, on-chip device is a huge breakthrough in the optical sensing of airborne particles and viruses.

Soon disease vectors like viruses will have no place to hide. Go science!

Science Images Online

Since I write about science, I often use or link to associated science and technology images. I've also taken some of my own photos to include in science updates. You can find this image of an equation written on glass and others at the stock photography site, Dreamstime.com. 

I think of science and technical photography as creative cross-training. It give me new ways of looking at things for my writing and research.

Interested in World War II diesel submarine technology? I took a series of photographs recently aboard the USS Razorback-394. Everything from views through a hatch, water cutoff valves, and navigation panels to an old school diving officer's checklist panel and torpedo launch controls.

Do you have ways to stir your creative or scientific creativity? Go science!