Visual experiment gives new view of Parthenon

Video by Hal Jacobs, Emory Quad Talk.

What’s it like to approach the Parthenon with its famous frieze in place, painted in the vivid colors of its original glory? And what’s it like to stand near the top of the Parthenon’s majestic columns and install canvas panels representing the frieze?

Watch the video above for on-the-scene footage of Emory’s Parthenon Project, a visual experiment that took place last fall at the Nashville Parthenon, a full-scale replica of the ancient temple in Athens, Greece, but without the frieze embellishment.

Visit Emory's Parthenon Project web site.

Emory art historian Bonna Wescoat and 11 of her students conducted the experiment to bring the science of seeing into a long-standing puzzle: Why was such a refined work of art placed in what seems like an obscure location?

The original carved marble panels, depicting a ceremonial procession, were located high on the outside wall of the Parthenon’s central chamber, and were partially blocked by the surrounding colonnade. The Emory students created facsimiles of some of the panels and installed them at the Nashville structure. They then recruited members of the public to slowly approach the building, and using a detailed questionnaire, describe what details they could see of the frieze, and how well they could see them.

“Of the 93 people who took the survey, the overwhelming majority said they could see the figures on the frieze and many of the details without difficulty,” Wescoat says.

The gods and heroes carved into the Parthenon’s pediments and metopes are more broadly visible in their prominent placements atop the columns, on the outermost rim of the temple. Viewers have to draw closer, however, to see the mortals depicted in the frieze’s procession.

“Many of the observers in the experiment thought [viewing the frieze] was a more intimate experience,” Wescoat says. “We can only imagine that for the ancient Athenians, it must have also been a deeply moving one to be in the company of ideal representations of themselves.”

The experiential data “offers a major step forward in our understanding of the visibility of the frieze,” she adds, “and it sheds light on why this particular position may have been chosen.”

Related:
Optical experiment eyes Parthenon mystery
How the Greek gods measure up

Relationship advice from a retiring psychologist

Emory's Quadrangle Magazine asked Stephen Nowicki, above, who recently retired as Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory, for his advice on "endings." Following is an excerpt from his response:

"As you value your relationships, pay special attention to their endings. While beginning and deepening relationships are important, it is the endings that provide the richest source of learning. It is only then that you can look back to find out what you did well and what you did poorly, so that you can apply that knowledge to your next relationships.

"Think about how you ended your time at Emory. Remember the people to whom you were going to say special things before you ended. Evaluate how you did. If you are like most of us, you didn't end very well. You didn't tell many of the people that meant something to you during your time at Emory that they were important and appreciated. You got busy and maybe irritated as you ended, the two major ways that we soften the pain of ending, especially when we are ending something good.

"But it is not too late.

"Many of those people are still around, be they former peers or professors. You have time to contact them and tell them they meant something to you. You have no idea how important that might be, to them and to you.

"So, a take home message? Give your relationships the attention they deserve, and especially how you have ended them. Beginning and ending relationships are the rhythm track of our lives, but we get no formal education about how to do it well. So you are going to have to do some home schooling."

Related:
Top 10 facts about non-verbal communication
Anxious children confuse 'mad' and 'sad'

Making tracks during Spring Break

The lack of traffic on the way to work at Emory this morning was a big clue: It's Spring Break and most of the students are scattered to the four winds.

If you are not off on a Spring Break adventure, you can live vicariously by following the coastal capers of environmental studies' students from Anthony Martin's class on the ecology of barrier islands. The group's week-long field trip began on Georgia's Cumberland Island over the weekend. Martin is posting about the trip regularly, including lots of great nature photos, on his blog Life Traces of the Georgia Coast.

We wish the coastal crew, and all the Spring Break travelers, happy trails. The campus is way too quiet without you.

Photos by Anthony Martin.

Related:
Insider's guide to Georgia's barrier islands
Survivor: The marsh episode

MathOverflow: Make your problems everyone's problems

By Carol Clark

“New technologies are changing the way we do math research,” says Emory mathematician David Zureick-Brown.

Zureick-Brown gave a talk at the recent ScienceOnline conference about MathOverflow, a web site that he co-founded while he was graduate student at Berkeley, along with colleagues Anton Geraschenko and Scott Morrison.

MathOverflow provides a dynamic forum to more efficiently solve problems, by allowing users to post questions and quickly receive answers and advice from a large community of research mathematicians.

“Mathematicians tend to know a lot more math besides what they publish,” says Zureick-Brown, explaining that the idea behind the web site is to uncover this buried knowledge when it’s needed.

“When I’m working on a problem, if I’m stuck on something, I dig and dig and dig, and find a question that captures what I’m confused about,” he says. Previously, he would just take that question to colleagues and to conferences, but now he can post it on MathOverflow to quickly reach a much wider community.

Founded in 2009, Math Overflow has built-up 10,000 active users who have posed more than 35,000 questions, which have received more than 60,000 answers. The average time it takes to get a correct answer is under six hours. MathOverflow answers are now frequently cited in research papers.

The web site’s community ranges from gifted high school students to Fields Medalists. Most active users are either full-time math researchers, or in a university training to become one.

The web site is highly interactive, and allows users to vote and gain reputation. “The idea is that the good content should just naturally shift to the top of the site,” Zureick-Brown says. As users build reputation, they slowly gain rights and can eventually edit posts and answers, making the community self-moderating.



Most of the questions on MathOverflow involve highly esoteric mathematical problems and concepts. But the site also has a share of posts that math lovers of all levels can appreciate, such as: “I’m interested in magic tricks whose explanations require deep mathematics. The trick should be one that would actually appeal to a layman.”

And a user named Jason asked if anyone knew of any good math videos. That question drew more than 70 responses with links to a range of videos, from a short film revealing the beauty of Moebius Transformations to a group of singing mathematicians (see above) performing “Finite Simple Group.”

Top image of Hadwiger-Nelson problem by David Eppstein, via Wikipedia Mathematics Portal.

Ambassadors for the natural world

Emory alum David Mizejewski gets really wrapped up in his work.

The wildlife author and spokesman for the National Science Foundation has spent his career trying to reconnect people to the natural world. As the opening speaker for a recent National Science Teacher Association conference in Atlanta, he brought out a host of "animal ambassadors," including a Burmese python, above, and a juvenile red kangaroo, below.

Kids, in particular, need to spend more time exploring the outdoors, he says. “Parents are worried about the dangers out there, but there are more risks associated with a sedentary, indoor lifestyle."
 
Strange animal facts are his forte: for example, when your dog jumps up on you and tries to “kiss” you when you get home from work, it’s not primarily that he’s happy to see you; it’s genetically coded behavior inherited from their wolf ancestors who, as pups, would go to the den’s opening and jump up to lick regurgitated food from their parents’ mouths.

Owls can’t turn their heads all the way around a la The Exorcist but they can rotate their necks as much as 270 degrees in each direction. And an American alligator’s bite can have as much force as “having a pickup truck dropped on you.”

Read the full article by Mary Loftus in Emory Magazine.

Photos by Emory Photo/Video.