Atlanta Science Festival is underway at Georgia Tech, spotlighting interesting musical instruments
The Guthman musical instrument competition is happening at Georgia Tech.
It's part of the kickoff to the Atlanta Science Festival.
Inventors come from around the world to show off musical instruments that look and sound a little different.
'Because it is sort of what the School of Music here at Georgia Tech is all about, which is taking the art and human part of music making and overlapping it with the science and technology that we do everywhere here at Georgia Tech,' Jeff Albert, Interim Director of the Georgia Tech School of Music told Channel 2.
The festival's official launch was on Saturday.
There are over 100 different events happening over the next two weeks and most of them are free.
You can see the schedule of events at https://atlantasciencefestival.org/.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
TRENDING STORIES:
Spelman student charged in wrong-way DUI crash that shut down I-75/I-85
Officer-involved shooting investigation underway in East Point, police say
Video shows man slashing tents at homeless encampment near Ebenezer Baptist Church
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
As the ocean warms, a new study found it's also changing color
For thousands of years, writers have come up with increasingly creative ways to describe the 'wine-dark sea.' But a new study suggests that modern poets may be faced with a slightly different palette. A study published Thursday in the journal Science found that the ocean is changing color as it warms. By analyzing satellite data from 2003 to 2022, researchers from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology noticed that waters near the equator were getting bluer, while areas near the poles were turning greener. Lead author Haipeng Zhou calls it 'this greener greens or bluer blues phenomenon.' The culprit, the paper suggests, is the teeny tiny plant-like creatures that form the building blocks of the marine food web — phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are filled with a green pigment called chlorophyll that allows them to absorb energy from sunlight through photosynthesis. As waters near the equator warm, they're less hospitable to the microscopic critters, so the water appears bluer. At the poles, the colder water is far more nutrient-dense, so there's lots more phytoplankton to go around, giving the waters a rich, green tinge. It's not a new phenomenon. There's a reason the Caribbean is known as the land of dazzling turquoise waters, while Arctic waters are a dark teal contrast to the ivory ice floes around them. But Zhou, who began the research at Duke University and completed it as a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, found that as the ocean warms, this phenomenon is getting stronger. Their study only looked at the open ocean, not coastal waters. Near the coast, there are plenty of complicating factors that make it hard to clearly point to phytoplankton as the main cause of color changes, like dirt and sand floating in the water, shifting winds, pollution or even seagrass die off. To understand the concentrations of phytoplankton, the research team relied on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database made up of samples scooped from various research cruises all over the world. This database, plus satellite imagery, helped show the color shift in different regions of the ocean. The changing levels of phytoplankton could be bad news for fish in the tropics, or for communities that rely on those fish. But it could also be a boon for their northern and southern cousins. 'We all know that phytoplankton is the bottom of the food chain. Any impact on phytoplankton will have impacts on its predators,' Zhou said. Phytoplankton need sun and nutrients to flourish, but when the ocean warms, the individual layers that make up the sea grow more stratified, so it's harder for phytoplankton to float up and down the water column to access the same light and nutrients they're used to, he said. So while scientists can clearly say that warmer waters lead to fewer phytoplankton, and they know that climate change is one of the main reasons the oceans are heating up, it's not clear if climate change is the reason for the color shift. 'We need longer records, 30 years, 40 years, to make us more confident whether it is linked to climate change or global variability,' Zhou said. The study only looked at about 20 years of data, which Zhou said is enough to confidently say that something has changed, but not long enough to know what caused that change. Other factors can and do affect water temperature, like the shift in trade winds over the Atlantic that led to a coral-killing marine heat wave in 2023. 'The study period was too short to rule out the influence of recurring climate phenomena such as El Niño,' wrote co-author Susan Lozier, Dean of the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech, in a statement. However, Zhou added, more research may very well find that this color-shifting trend continues into the future as human-caused climate change continues to heat up the oceans. 'The temperature of the water is rising. While there's no evidence showing that this progress will slow down, it's very likely we'll have warmer waters in the future, which means we'll have a continuous impact on the ocean ecosystem.' Correction: An initial version of this story incorrectly listed the start of the period analyzed on satellite as 2009. It was 2003.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Volcano Found Hiding 'In Plain Sight' Right Next to NASA Mars Rover
Sometimes, it's really hard to see the volcanoes for the rocks, especially if you're just a one-ton rover all alone in a remote crater on Mars. Nevertheless, a bump on the rim of Jezero Crater is indeed a volcano, scientists have ruled – and the finding, thanks to NASA's Perseverance rover, has really exciting implications. "Volcanism on Mars is intriguing for a number of reasons – from the implications it has on habitability, to better constraining the geologic history," says planetary scientist James Wray from the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Jezero Crater is one of the best studied sites on Mars. If we are just now identifying a volcano here, imagine how many more could be on Mars. Volcanoes may be even more widespread across Mars than we thought." Wray noticed the mountain, called Jezero Mons, back in 2007, but there wasn't enough evidence to support the interpretation that it was a volcano. Then Perseverance started finding volcanic rocks on the crater floor. Suspicions grew that Jezero Mons may have burst upward from Mars' molten interior. To confirm speculations, a team led by planetary scientist Sara Cuevas-Quiñones of Georgia Tech decided to conduct a thorough investigation, looking for known characteristics of volcanoes here on Earth. "We used data from the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and Perseverance Rover, all in combination to puzzle this out," Wray explains. Their verdict? Jezero Mons is volcanic. It even has a volcanic crater. It's not active now, and likely hasn't been for a very long time, but this identification will make Perseverance's findings easier to interpret. There's another interesting takeaway: Jezero Crater was once a lake. If it was sitting right next to a steaming pile of active volcano, the conditions may have been warm enough in the lake for life. "The coalescence of these two types of systems makes Jezero more interesting than ever," Wray says. "We have samples of incredible sedimentary rocks that could be from a habitable region alongside igneous rocks with important scientific value." The findings are published in Communications Earth & Environment. NASA Satellite Glimpses Giant Volcano Peeking Above The Clouds of Mars The Universe's Missing Black Holes May Have Been Located Mysteriously Magnetic Moon Rocks Might Have an Explosive Origin Story
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Soft metal solid-state battery mimics biology, could drive EVs 500 miles per charge
Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a new metal combination that could transform the future of solid-state batteries. By blending lithium with a soft, surprising element, sodium, the team has found a way to reduce the pressure needed for these batteries to operate significantly. This innovation could lead to lighter, longer-lasting power sources for everything from smartphones to electric vehicles. The findings were published by the lab of Matthew McDowell, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His group has also filed for a patent on the breakthrough. Solid-state batteries promise greater energy density and better safety than lithium-ion ones. They use a solid electrolyte instead of a flammable liquid, making them more stable. However, they often require high pressure to work. The metal plates needed to apply that pressure are often heavier and bulkier than the battery itself. 'A solid-state battery usually requires metal plates to apply this high pressure, and those plates can be bigger than the battery itself,' McDowell said. 'This makes the battery too heavy and bulky to be effective.' That challenge has kept solid-state batteries from reaching widespread use, despite years of research and hype. The team, led by Georgia Tech research scientist Sun Geun Yoon, found that adding sodium to lithium changes the game. Sodium is not active in the battery's electrochemical process, but its softness plays a key role. 'Adding sodium metal is the breakthrough,' McDowell said. 'It seems counterintuitive because sodium is not active in the battery system, but it's very soft, which helps improve the performance of the lithium.' Sodium's softness is no exaggeration. In a controlled setting, someone could press a gloved finger into the metal and leave a mark. When paired with lithium, it deforms easily under lower pressure, keeping better contact with the solid electrolyte. This improves overall battery performance. To understand why sodium-lithium batteries perform better, the team turned to biology. Specifically, they used the concept of morphogenesis — the way biological structures evolve based on local conditions. Morphogenesis is rare in materials science. But in this case, the interaction between sodium and lithium followed this pattern. The researchers saw that sodium behaved like a deformable phase, adjusting to structural changes during battery use. McDowell's team developed this concept under a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), alongside other universities. The implications of this research are broad. It could lead to phone batteries that last far longer or electric vehicles capable of going 500 miles on a single charge. The ability to reduce the pressure requirement without sacrificing energy capacity opens new possibilities for scaling solid-state batteries. While challenges remain before commercialization, McDowell's group continues to test new materials. Their goal is to make solid-state batteries more competitive with the lithium-ion standard. If successful, this shift could mark a major leap in battery technology. The study is published in the journal Science.
