Web watch

To suggest topics or sites for Web Watch, please visit http://www.physicstoday.org/suggestwebwatch.html . Compiled and edited by Charles Day

http://www.gigapan.org

NASA’s Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are equipped with gigapixel cameras that create seamless, panoramic views of the Martain surface. The camera system is now available for terrestrial applications through a spinoff organization called Gigapan. Photographer David Bergman used a Gigapan camera to generate an image of President Barack Obama speaking at his inauguration. You can find and explore that and other images on Gigapan’s homepage.

http://www.ymec.con/hp/pref2/

YMEC is a Tokyo-based company that develops sound measurement and analysis software. The company’s virtual Sound Preference Audition Room provides audio files to help you determine how much reverberation you like when you listen to various kinds of music. The sound of a full orchestra in an anechoic room is particularly striking.

http://www.ameslab.gov/60thanniversary/60thhome.htm

The Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory turned 60 in 2007. To mark the anniversary, the Iowa lab put together the online exhibit Ames Laboratory—Shaping Science for 60 Years. The exhibit charts the lab’s expanding mission from purifying uranium in the 1940s to carrying out a broad range of materials science research today.