New technology in Weeks Hall, home to UW-Madison’s geology and geophysics department, allows students to see 3-D images of the earth.
“One of the things that geologists do as part of their research in understanding the earth is we have to be able to imagine what’s going on below the land’s surface in three dimensions,” Jean Bahr, geology and geophysics department chair, said. “We’re planning to use this both for research and educational purposes, and to train students to think about things in three dimensions.”
Bahr said the Halliburton Geoscience Visualization Center was inaugurated last week and will be used in courses at all levels.
UW-Madison geology professor Harold Tobin said the images are viewed through special polarized glasses.
“The planet has complicated three-dimensional structures and shapes within it that are harder to see by making a picture that looks like perspective 3-D,” Tobin said. “Making [the image] three-dimensional in the way your mind views it means that you get a much greater appreciation for all those complex relationships.”
According to Tobin, the lab is not the first visualization system to display stereo graphics at the university.
“Ours is really state-of-the-art graphics, and I’m pretty sure the most advanced facility of its kind at UW-Madison.”
The facility was created in partnership with Landmark Graphics, a Halliburton Corporation subsidiary. Bahr said the company provided the technology, which is similar to what is used in the petroleum industry.
“A lot of geologists go to work in the oil industry,” Bahr said. “I think they see it as an opportunity to get state of the art equipment into universities so students coming out of universities will have used some of the tools that they might use in their future careers.”
Tobin said alumni connections were key to the partnership because Halliburton CEO David Lesar is a UW-Madison alumnus.
Gene Minnich, Landmark’s director of global operations, said in a statement UW-Madison’s facility was better “than many companies’ in the industry.”
“For us it’s a fantastic boon because it’s a donation of the facility itself, it’s not a research project or a grant to do some particular study,” Tobin said.
