January 19, 2005

SDSC Visualizations Featured On
The Science Channel’s “Top 100 Discoveries”

By Ashley Wood

Animations from the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s (SDSC) visualization department will be featured tonight on The Science Channel’s countdown of the “Top 100 Discoveries.” Airing this evening at 8 and 11 p.m. (EST), the segment will feature scientific chemistry animations created by SDSC’s team of visualization experts.

Designed to visually demonstrate chemical reactions such as ionic bonding, covalent bonding and radioactive decay, the animations give Science Channel viewers an inside look at basic atomic processes that were once theories and have since been demonstrated to be true. The visualizations highlight a number of atomic properties that contributed to the significant scientific discoveries highlighted during the show.

Using the TeraGrid network, each 15-second animation took an average of 10 hours for an SDSC visualization researcher to create and took 128 CPU hours to render. Animations will be available for viewing on January 20, 2005.

Media contacts:
Greg Lund, SDSC Communications, (858) 534-8314
Ashley Wood, SDSC Communications, (858) 534-8363