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The team used an innovative method to calculate the water spectrum at sunspot temperatures. The method will be useful in modelling systems with an abundance of extremely hot water molecules, such as forest fires.
The team was led by Oleg Polyansky, a theoretician from Russia's Institute of Applied Physics; Nizhnii Novgorod, who works with co-researcher Jonathan Tennyson, a physicist at University College, London; and UW chemistry professor Peter Bernath, an expert in molecular astronomy.
In their 1995 study, the team recorded evidence of water -- not in liquid form because the sun is too hot, but as vapour or steam -- in dark sunspots. The scientists compared the laboratory infrared spectrum of hot water with that of a sunspot. The water in the sunspots causes a sort of stellar greenhouse effect that affects the sunspot's energy output. Hot water molecules are also the most important absorbers of infrared radiation in the atmospheres of cool stars, such as "variable red giants".
In their follow-up study, to be published today in the journal Science, the scientists examined the spectrum of extremely hot water such as that found in sunspots and in the laboratory. Hot water has a complicated infrared spectrum characterized by a dense series of sharp absorption lines. But the transitions that give rise to those lines were not known, until now. The research team carried out a simulation of the infrared spectrum based purely on theoretical calculations, allowing accurate assignments of the absorption lines.
"The detailed interpretation of the infrared spectrum of hot water is one of the important unsolved problems in molecular spectroscopy," the researchers write in their Science article.
A symposium on Ergogenic Aids and Performance runs this afternoon in Matthews Hall room 1621, sponsored by the kinesiology department. Speakers are UW's Jay Thomson ("Fluids, Heat and Exercise" at 1:30); Terry Graham of Guelph ("Caffeine, Exercise and Work" at 2:20); and Peter Lemon of Kent State ("Creatine Loading, Metabolism and Performance" at 3:10).
Federation Hall hosts "Summerfest II, under the Big Top" tonight and tomorrow night. Tickets for the party: $5 for Federation of Students members, $7 others.
Renovations to the accounts receivable area on the first floor of Needles Hall should be starting soon. While the work is in progress, the cashiers will be moving to the second floor of NH -- the wickets along the south wall, now used only at peak registration times -- and other staff will find a home in the Math and Computer building. Details will be announced. . . .
The elevator in the PAS (Psychology) building will be shut down this afternoon for the last stage of a repainting job, made necessary by graffiti and other vandalism. I'm told that for some reason that one elevator gets much more attention from yahoos than the others on campus. . . .
About two-thirds of those responding said they read the Bulletin every day, but I did hear from five people who said they read it "almost never".
What I don't know is how many people read yesterday's Bulletin on the Web without clicking the button; or tried to click it and found their browsers wouldn't send mail to me; or read the Bulletin instead on newsgroups (uw.general and uw.campus-news) or on paper copies posted on bulletin boards. Anyway, thank you again to all who responded, and to several who gave me advice on the mechanics of Web "forms" for future questionnaires.
Here's what happens when you let art students design web pages: black backgrounds, textured backgrounds, multicoloured backgrounds, animated gifs, variations on the UW shield, little mug shots of art students, thumbnail reproductions of their work, some classy icons and buttons to click, the Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man.
Carl Hennig of the language laboratory -- whose technical work these days goes far beyond language tapes -- explains how the site came to be:
The Fine Arts 228 web site is a showcase for students enrolled in a computer graphics course taught by Prof. Don MacKay. The students were required to create a "new and better Fine Arts" web site using the tools taught and skills learned in the course.If you look closely at the bottom of the page, you'll see that one of the link buttons keeps changing, presenting portraits of one fine arts instructor after another. And in various places throughout the site, you'll find plenty of links to the real home page for the fine arts department -- which hasn't, so far, decided to adopt any of the students' ventures as a model instead.For the most part, the pages were created using Netscape Gold as a HTML editor and Adobe Photshop as the graphics editor. The web pages are hosted on a Watstar server in East Campus Hall. The main page, muser.htm, has been designed to "look like" the other Fine Arts pages and may also be accessed via the Fine Arts undergraduate studies link.
CAR
July 19, 1971: A computerized circulation system is introduced in the library, with yellow punched cards in some 60,000 books.
Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
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