The art of ENGINEERING: From the kaleidoscopic swirl of networks to a starfish made of foam - amazing images reveal the beauty of cutting edge research
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At first glance, these images may look other-worldly, but they actually show everyday materials such as glass and foam - and each one are winning entries in a photo competition designed to show the beauty of engineering.
Other entries include a kaleidoscopic swirl of a neural network, ribbons of crystals unfolding like sheets of wrapping paper and a photo showing the look of relief on the faces of villagers in Malawi after their local well was repaired.
The University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering photo competition shows the breadth of research going on at one university alone.
The University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering photo competition shows the breadth of research going on at the university. This is the winning image by Indrat Aria. It shows free-standing graphene foam, which is made by growing layers of graphene on the surface of a porous metal foam skeleton, which was the dissolved so that only the foam remains
Along with three main winners, the Zeiss-sponsored competition had two extra categories this year: a prize for images taken using an electron microscope and a Head of Department's prize for the photo or video with the most innovative engineering story behind it.
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The first prize was awarded to Indrat Aria, for his image entitled Asteroidea Electrica, which shows free-standing graphene foam, made by growing layers of graphene on the surface of a porous metal foam skeleton.
The skeleton is then carefully dissolved so that only the graphene foam remains.
Second prize went to PhD student Yarin Gal for his image of extrapolated art, extending past the edges of paintings to see what the full scenery might have looked like. He used the PatchMatch algorithm on the frame of Van Gogh's painting Starry Night to extrapolate its contents (pictured left). A pretty image of graphene flowers by Mari Ijäs is pictured
This image shows pulsed laser deposition, which was used to apply a metal layer to a glass slide. The technique is used for creating structures that induce thermal and electrical conduction across the surface of an insulator. The image was captured by Jonathon Parkins using an optical microscope
As it's electrically conductive, highly porous and lightweight, graphene foam could be used in applications such as chemical sensing, energy storage and ultra-lightweight structures.
Dr Aria used an electron microscope to take the image and then applied artificial colours to it.
Second prize went to PhD student Yarin Gal for his image of extrapolated art, extending past the edges of paintings to see what the full scenery might have looked like.
He used the PatchMatch algorithm on the frame of Van Gogh's painting Starry Night to extrapolate its contents.
Third prize went to undergraduate student Anthony Rubinstein-Baylis, for an image he took while on his gap year in rural Malawi.
The Electron Microscopy Prize was awarded to Tanvir Qureshi for his image of a bridge forming in self-healing concrete. A sample was collected from the cement's self-healing zone, where flower-like bridges effectively expanded and healed the cracks
Undergraduate student Anthony Rubinstein-Baylis took third prize in the competition for an image he took while on his gap year in rural Malawi. In it, a group of people crowded around a broken village well and await the one person who can help - Francis the engineer (centre)
In it, a group of people crowded around a broken village well and await the one person who can help - Francis the engineer.
Despite a lack of formal training, Francis took water to scores of local villages through ingenuity and hard graft. He jumped down the well and quickly sorted the problem – the rope had simply fallen off the pulley – restoring order so the day could carry on as normal.
The Electron Microscopy Prize was awarded to Tanvir Qureshi for his image of a bridge forming in self-healing concrete.
A sample was collected from the cement's self-healing zone and put under a microscope, where flower-like bridges effectively expanded and healed the cracks.
Worldwide, a significant amount of money is currently being spent on the repair and maintenance of existing concrete structures, although its demand is increasing.
This image shows an array of diffractive lenses imaged using a dark field optical microscope. Each lens is composed of hundreds of metallic nanostructures, which scatter light at specific wavelengths
In this picture the invisible has been made visible. A web of carbon nanotubes are bundled together and integrated in a matrix. The carbon nanotubes were synthesised in a continuous gas phase process and the picture shown is a snapshot of this. The image is a negative
Bottom-up growth of nanostructures is a fascinating area of nanoscience. This image shows Zinc Oxide nanowires grown on a graphite flake during thermal chemical vapour deposition, and has been coloured using Photoshop
Considering the growing concrete demand, environmental concerns, and the longevity of built infrastructure, suitable self‐healing technology adaptation in cement concrete is becoming a highly sought after technology.
The Head of Department's prize went to Andrew Payne for his video of the rise and fall of liquid crystal 'mountains'.
He made a video from a collection of images taken at one-second intervals. It shows the slow growth of liquid crystal structures under the influence of an alternating electric field, and their rapid collapse as the field is reversed.
Entrants, including students, professors and other staff, were told that the images they entered may be 'beautiful, fascinating, intriguing, amusing, or possibly all of these things'.
The images were judged by experts at Zeiss, and Cambridge professors including Dame Ann Dowling, Dame Dowling is the first female President of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
'We continue to be blown away by the beautiful images produced by our students and researchers for this competition,' said Philip Guildford, Director of Research for the Department.
'But more than just pretty pictures, these images also show how engineering is helping to solve problems, big and small, all over the world. While our winners were judged to be the best of this year's entries, we received more than 250 diverse, beautiful and meaningful images.'
A color-coded map shows the output of a deep neural network applied at each point in the image. Deep neural networks have recently enabled breakthroughs in machine vision, speech processing and translation, but some of their properties still are not well-understood. This research is a small part of the effort to understand why they work
Here, researchers from the Fibre Optic Sensing Research Group and the Cambridge Centre for Smart infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) supervise the installation of the innovative fibre optic instrumentation into the lining of one of one of Crossrail's sprayed concrete tunnels during its construction. The picture was taken 131ft (40 metres) below ground level
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