With a Bowdoin summer scholarship, Thais Carrillo creates a virtual edition of the giant’s ladder at Harpswell, one of geological importance.
During his first semester in Bowdoin, the elegance of the land and the oceanographic science of Carrillo brought a box to the domain of the rugged beach known as the Giant’s Staircase. But she struggled to get close to the attractive parts of the site while using a wheelchair and the uneven, rocky terrain was too damaging to her.
Instead, it relied on videos and photographs to greatly disrupt the interruption of single basalt in the mother rock of bituminous shale. The basalt looks a bit like a folded black accordion or, as the call suggests, a few gigantic steps.
Experience has made you want this site and others in Maine to be more accessible. In consultation with his advisors, Visiting Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences and Oceanographic Sciences Jacky Baughman and Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Stacy Doore (who now moved to Colby College), Carrillo presented a task this summer to virtually recreate the giant’s ladder. It is funded through a grant from the Gibbons Summer Research Program.
While detailing The virtual environment of Carrillo, with pink flowers waving in the breeze and the clouds floating above, yours is in the north-south alignment of the shale rock and the wide basalt band that runs through it.
“We are looking for assistance for academics to perceive the dating between these two types of rocks,” Carrillo said. “Since basalt intersects with the shale, it means that the shale was there first, a clue for scholars that the shale will have to be older than the basalt that crossed it. This can be a difficult concept to perceive without seeing it.”
When you complete the virtual program, academics will be able to attach it from any PC and start exploring.
A virtual environment that mimics a geological can gain advantages not only for academics with disabilities, Carrillo said, but also for academics who read remotely. “Now that the COVID pandemic is widespread in our lives, the importance of this type of program is greater exponentially,” he said.
Using photographs of the giant’s stairs, Carrillo models the rocks in a program called Blender. It takes several hours to make a rock or rock segment that you will import into the environmental structure tool, Unity. It also adds other realistic elements, such as the actual plaque on site and a space north of the stairs, to consulting visitors.
Although he had no delight in creating virtual reality, Carrillo temporarily followed the software. He thinks some of his skill comes from his artistic training. “In Bowdoin, I used to sculpt in my own time in the ceramic studio, and I painted and drew, and I think it’s a credit to me as a three-dimensional modeler. And it was a laugh to apply the same art concepts to anything virtual.”
The interdisciplinary nature of virtual truth, in the case of Carrillo, combines science, art, accessibility and schooling, has hooked it to technology. In his current year, he plans to specialize in education and psychology, with a minor imaginable in computer science.
The chances of generation for teachers are almost endless, he said. History scholars may notice the Mayan ruins of Guatemala or the pyramids of Egypt, and even with characters from that era. Geology scholars can investigate the origins of the Earth at sites around the world without getting on a plane.
“I mean, all [land science and oceanographic] labs can become virtual reality,” Carrillo said. “To those we pass and those we don’t pass because they’re too far away.” He added click-and-click contextual information, he said, or new visual angles, as from above, would only be the experience.
“Virtual truth is the future,” he said. “I’m not just thinking about movies, I’m thinking about classes. Many others can use VR and replace their experiences. And we can climb it beyond what exists in the genuine world.”