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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to another episode of Spark Science. I am your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff. I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. But, I’ve been known to cosplay as DC Comic’s Doctor Light. You can check out the images in our Instagram. I do this at various cons in Seattle, and I suggest you take a little time to look up this obscure astrophysicist Justice League member.

One of the cons we keep coming back to is GeekGirlCon, and this is the second episode from that trip. Every year, there are tons of people of all ages in costumes. And there’s also a DIY Science Zone created by Dr. Raychelle Burks. You can check out her interview in our season four. At GeekGirlCon, we get the opportunity to interview scientists, engineers and mathematicians who take time to volunteer in that DIY Zone.

In this episode, we interview a cosplaying chemist, an engineer in grad school, and an artist that paints astronomy as accurately as she can. We hope you enjoy the show.

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I’m so excited because we’re back at GeekGirlCon and I’m talking with one of the best cosplayers I’ve probably ever seen. I’m going to let you introduce and then I’m gonna talk about all the cosplay and the science that you do at Shoreline Community College.

Torrey Stenmark: My name is Torrey Stenmark. I am an adjunct instructor at Shoreline Community College where I teach chemistry, and I am a cosplayer and costumer of everything. [Laughs.]

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So the first time I saw you, I think, it was of Captain Marvel.

Torrey Stenmark: Sounds right.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And you’ve been Miss Frizzle. Right now, you are Emma Frost. And I think all of these people have, in my opinion, STEM–some STEM association, right? So Captain Marvel did aeronautics.

Torrey Stenmark: Sure, sure.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And Emma Frost controls phase changes.

Torrey Stenmark: Right.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And Miss Frizzle is a science teacher.

Torrey Stenmark: Obviously.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So what other costumes am I missing? Because you’re a staple at the DIY Zone. You’re always there. You’re always–you know, I can see you in your new costume every year. So tell me other ones I’m missing.

Torrey Stenmark: Uh, let’s see. I have a lot of Star Wars costumes. So I have a couple different versions of a Jedi knight. I have Princess Leia and Senator Padmé Amidala. I’ve done some Star Trek. I’ve also done some Lord of the Rings. My recent really big project was Galadriel from the way she appears in The Hobbit movie, or the first one. So it’s this six-foot long train on a gown. It’s all covered in sparkles and rind stones and everything and it’s very delicate and ethereal and that was really fun. That was my latest big project that I finished up.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You just commit [laughs.] Like, you really do. But do your students–so you’re teaching chemistry, right?

Torrey Stenmark: Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You’re teaching these chemistry courses in college. And do they know that you do this?

Torrey Stenmark: More or less, yeah. So, this quarter it’s easy because it’s Halloween. I always wear one of my costumes to Halloween. So this year, I came to teach class as a Jedi Master Anharat Forkiel [sp?].

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I have no idea who that is.

Torrey Stenmark: It’s an original character. So one of the other things that I’ve started doing, I think, since the last time we talked is volunteering with a group called Saber Guild.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.

Torrey Stenmark: Saber Guild is sort of like–you may have heard of the 501st Legion or the Rebel Legion, big Star Wars costuming groups that are recognized by Lucasfilm. Saber Guild is affiliated with those, but what we do is we dress up as Jedi and Sith and we do light saber choreography.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.

Torrey Stenmark: So I have a couple different versions of original Jedi characters. They clearly belong in Star Wars but the name is sort of original. And I’ve been really enjoying that as a way to kind of give back to the community and a way to have a ton of fun and get a good workout.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I mean, if you make an original character, then no one else can be you, right [laughing]?

Torrey Stenmark: Right, exactly. So I get to bring my own take on what it means, how do I want to be a Jedi Knight? Like, we all have the same world we’re playing in but I get to put my own personal spin on it and that’s really fun.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s like visual fan fiction.

Torrey Stenmark: It is, it is. It’s not quite LARPing—

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You’re a pioneer.

Torrey Stenmark: …But it’s a little bit like LARPing.

[both laughing]

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well, so I’m going to take a step back. When you were an undergrad and you were picking your major and wanting to go into, I’m guessing, something STEM-like, what drew you to chemistry?

Torrey Stenmark: I’m not sure I remember, because I knew, in first grade I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Like, literally I did a project, what am I going to do when I grow up? I’m going to be a scientist. But what I can tell you is why I decided to go into organic chemistry, specifically. Organic chemistry is about understanding why things happen.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.

Torrey Stenmark: And I think that—

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Like it’s a process.

Torrey Stenmark: It’s a precess, very process-based, very mechanism-based. How do the molecules fit together on a big complicated scale. And I think it’s one of those things where either you hit that and your brain goes, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing, I want to know more!” or you just go, “What…?” And it’s just such a gear change. It either works incredibly well for you or it doesn’t, and I think it just doesn’t for a lot of people.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Mhmm.

Torrey Stenmark: And I do sometimes get to teach O-chem, and I try to present it in as accessible and interesting a way as possible. It won’t always work, right? Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. But I try to make it as interesting as I can and try to really get people to care about it and try to show them why I care about it. And that’s why I ended up in O-chem, is I had that moment where I was–I was a biochem major in undergrad at Colorado College, and so I’m taking my required organic chemistry class, and the teacher is putting up some big complicated synthesis on the board. So she’s trying to show you this thing turns into this thing into this thing. You know, ten steps

down the road you get to your final product. And I remember watching her do that and just being, like, “That’s so cool! I want to do that!”

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Torrey Stenmark: And that’s why I ended up going into O-chem, is just that instant moment of “Wow, this is great.”

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I feel–and correct me if I’m wrong–but I’m feeling with like your cosplay and what you just said, it just feels, makes me feel like you like to build things. You like things that build on each other, right?

Torrey Stenmark: I do, yeah.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Or like there’s a sequence of events. And I think when you’re building your costumes, when you’re building your classes and your curriculum, you want things to kind of flow, right?

Torrey Stenmark: Yeah, yeah. Same thing with cooking. I do a lot of cooking when I can, and it’s very similar. And honestly because cooking is chemistry, it’s just a question of, like, can you lick the spoon?

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.

Torrey Stenmark: Cooking yes, chemistry no. Please do not lick the spoon in a chem lab.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. Tell me a little bit about how long you’ve been working with GeekGirlCon and been on the floor, and what do you see? What’s the most interesting stuff that you’ve experienced here at GeekGirlCon?

Torrey Stenmark: Sure. So I’ve been attending GeekGirlCon since the first one. This is our ninth, so I was an attendee the first couple years. And the DIY Science Zone is in its seventh year, so that would have been, you know, third year of the con–Dr. Raychelle Burks was starting this up. And I remember seeing her, talk about looking for help. So I showed you and I was like, “Can I help? I want to help. How do I get involved in this?”

And I think the fourth year–so the second year was the first year I was actually hands-on doing stuff, and ended up, because I live in the Seattle area and Ray lives in–currently she lives down in Texas–I kind of need somebody in the Seattle area to, you know, come to the con meetings and receive packages and stuff like that. So that’s kind of how I got into volunteering with the science, and I’ve been doing it every year since.

So it’s been interesting to watch GeekGirlCon grow and change; watching the con become a really safe space for people. One of my favorite things has been–so I love seeing girls that are interested in science. But the more number of kids we’ve been

starting to see with the they/them pronoun buttons has been really cool. You see kids who seem to be presenting, you know, maybe they have a he/him button but they’re wearing a dress.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.

Torrey Stenmark: …Haircuts that appear to be present differently than what you’d expect for them, what their assigned gender seems to be. And it’s just been a delight of this being a safe space for people to explore. And that’s one of the things that makes GeekGirlCon really special, is that we’re always clear that, like, yeah it’s a celebration of the female geek. That’s still our tagline. It’s not women only. It’s never been women only. And to sort of watch that expand and watch people realize yeah, this is a cool safe space to be who I am. That’s really important to me.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. I mean, I totally noticed that, too. I was telling Erin, like, all those kids here look so happy. And there was a point in my, in my–I was sitting there waiting for my sister to get here, and I was watching this young kid. And again, you’re right, I have no idea what their pronouns were, but I’m like, that could have been me. Like, I totally could have seen me at that age (they looked like 14 or something), just having a ball here, you know? And you’re right, you’re not super weird. Like I feel like if you are not dressed up in a costume, and like, you are exactly what you seem to be, that is almost odd here [both laughing]. Like, that is not usually what you’re going to see here.

Torrey Stenmark: And some people are in full-on cosplays, specific characters like all of us. And some people are just wearing, you know, this weird outfit. I saw a gal walking by that was wearing a Na’vi tail from Avatar… regular clothes otherwise, but she had this blue stripey tail going on. And it was super cute.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, you can do anything.

Torrey Stenmark: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, and it’s totally accepted here, if not celebrated here. We always talk about pop culture. We kind of already did, but can you think of any other representation of a chemist that is really good? I usually ask really good or really bad, but this is a joyous place, so let’s just say a really good representation of chemistry or a chemist in, like, media. Like, music, TV, comics, film, something like that.

Torrey Stenmark: Yeah, chemistry… what comes to mind first–it’s not quite chemistry but it is science–is, was it last year now? The big movie of A Wrinkle in Time came out. And there was that scene where Meg, who was played by a young black girl, is talking with her dad. And her dad’s a scientist. And he’s not a chemist; he’s some sort of weird astrophysics flavor. I don’t remember the details. And it’s all, it’s impossible tesseracts anyway.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah [laughs].

Torrey Stenmark: But so he’s, you know, he’s encouraging her. And I was watching that as a, you know, I’m a couple days shy of 36 now, and so I was watching that as an adult woman, watching this little girl with her dad encouraging her. And I, and knowing what he’s talking about. And I almost cried in the theater.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Awwww…

Torrey Stenmark: And it’s not that my parents weren’t loving and encouraging, ’cause they were. But they’re not chemists. They’re not scientists in quite the same way.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.

Torrey Stenmark: And it was beautiful for me as an adult white woman, and I can’t imagine what it would be like for a young black girl to see herself so directly representated. And that was gorgeous. And we get a lot of kids who are excited about stuff, and I’ve gotten girls who say they want to be scientists. So I’m always very encouraging and stuff.

That’s part of why the Science Zone avatar is Doctor Mae. She’s named after Mae Jemison. She’s a magical girl, African American with big afro puffs for her hair. And she’s super adorable and we do pins, and people love her. Particularly, we make sure that little girls who look like that go home with pins that have, you know, their face, or approximately their face on them and say, “Yes, you are part of science. We want you here in science. We want you to have fun.”

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Torrey Stenmark: And hey, if they just come and they just want to cover themselves in glitter and call it a day, that’s good too.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That happens, too.

Torrey Stenmark: I want them to come learn science…

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s my kid.

Torrey Stenmark: …But I’m happy if they just have fun [laughs].

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, we’ve been asking–this is kind of our closing questions about, if you can give us a, or a couple, fun facts. So like, kind of squashing misconceptions. Either of those. So for instance, I think I was–what was the fun fact engineering thing I was–oh, somebody was like, “There are no fun facts about engineering” [laughing]. She didn’t say that, but she was like, “I don’t know, like, give me an example.” And I was talking about Taipei 1O1 and the damper baby. Do you know what those are?

Torrey Stenmark: Damper baby. No…?

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, Taipei 1O1 used to be one of the tallest buildings in the world.

Torrey Stenmark: Is that the big spheres that hang back and forth that move with it?

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yes! Yes.

Torrey Stenmark: Okay, I didn’t know it was called a damper baby but I’ve heard about it.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s what they call it in Taipei 1O1. I don’t think every engineer calls it that. [Both laughing.] Or even other buildings outside of that Taipei 1O1.

But yeah, that massive sphere that is it in the building so that when big winds come, or an earthquake, those movements don’t create resonance with the building, and it makes it so the building doesn’t sway too much and get crazy and break windows and fall over and all that kind of stuff.

Torrey Stenmark: Yeah yeah yeah.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, like a fun fact like that.

Torrey Stenmark [musing]: A fun fact like that, about chemistry…

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Something you tell at dinner parties to impress people.

[Torrey laughs.]

Torrey Stenmark [laughing]: People are not impressed by me at dinner parties.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh-ho, that’s not true.

Torrey Stenmark: I don’t know, I mean my standard trivia question, uh, is…

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, we’ll call it that standard trivia question. I like that.

Torrey Stenmark: Yeah, it’s actually my dad’s favorite–I borrowed it from him–is, who is the last person on the Moon? It’s actually really interesting because Apollo 17, which was our last crewed message to the Moon, had the only actual scientist that went to the Moon. They ran half a dozen missions and they sent up like 18 people. 12 people have walked on the Moon, lunar surface.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I didn’t know you even know that.

Torrey Stenmark: I’m also a really big space nerd. Like that is one of my other really big things.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay, tell me all these facts.

Torrey Stenmark: How long do you have? [Torrey laughs.] But Apollo 17, they sent up a geologist.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Torrey Stenmark: The only one they sent up an actual PhD scientist, and he got to do a whole bunch of really cool science and stuff like that. That was Dr. Harrison Schmitt. He was the lunar module pilot so he was the first one back in to unit. The last human to walk on the moon, so far, was the commander of the mission, Eugene Cernan.

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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Sticking with the theme of visual arts in STEM, our next guest is an engineering graduate student who will talk to us about augmented reality.

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Joyee: It’s nice talking to you guys. I’m Joyee.

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Joyee: I’m a fifth-year PhD student at the University of Washington, currently pursuing a major in electric engineering. And I’m actually a volunteer with Pacific Science Center for five years, and I come here almost every year because I think this is a really nice activity with lots of young kids, especially lots of girls, who have passion in geek culture, including science and engineering field. I hope to use this chance to show them how wonderful science and technology can be, and hopefully one day some of them will go into the STEM field and some of them will support STEM field in many other ways.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, so I always try to, like, explain STEM. I always assume people know what STEM means.

Joyee: Oh, sorry.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: No, no, it’s okay! And I remember being at work and I–you know, I teach in physics and astronomy–and I remember somebody being like, “What does STEM mean?” One of my students. And I was like, “Oh yeah, science, technology, engineering, math.” And I want to admit to you Joyee, that I don’t talk to enough engineers on this show. I don’t. I don’t even talk to enough mathematicians. It’s all science, science, science, because I’m a physicist and I think we’re egotistical and we only want to talk to people like us.

So I want to thank you for talking to me. We talked a little bit before and you were

telling me about your dissertation. So, for our listeners, can you explain what kind of engineering you do for your PhD, and you’re almost done?

Joyee: Ah, yes. Hopefully I’m almost done, I say.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Joyee: So, in my major of electrical engineering, we have many fields. And my particular field’s involving the design and fabrication (which is building) of very small electronic devices that will move if we have any kind of movement, which can include telecomunication devices, any sensors in your laptop or phones, or any biomedical devices or any robotics parts. And my specific field involves the design of a tremble lens to be used in either a biomedical imaging system or AR/VR system, which are augmented reality or virtual reality systems. Kind of the big, or that’s the popular field of entertainment in the near future.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, and we were talking about AR and VR, and for our listeners, can you give a distinction between what is VR (virtual reality), and how is that different from AR (augmented reality)?

Joyee: Mhmm. So, the difference is actually quite literally in the name. Let’s say VR first, virtual reality. “Virtual” means it’s kind of a manmade environment. And in virtual reality systems, you don’t see the real world. Technically, you should not feel the real world as well; you are immersed in a totally artificial environment and feeling what the computer has generated for you. But for augmented reality, the virtual part is still there but it’s only part of the system. The majority of part will still be a real environment, and the computer system should superimpose a virtual object or a virtual system on top of the real environment around you. So, it’s kind of like a different application and has different technology requirements.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I remember talking to you early and you said that AR is more useful. Can you tell us more about what you meant by that.

Joyee: Yeah, I mean when I say AR is more useful, I mean more in a business or a technology side. Of course, VR is really useful as well. We’ll have VR–in my opinion–current technological VR is more for entertainment or for educational purpose to bring you into a different world. AR, it can combine a virtual environment into reality, so you can use the AR system while you are working in the real world. It can be a system program for your work, for your education, for your study. So, for AR, one example I really like that’s more close to people’s life is I know someone’s developing programs (I think they’re in market already) to help you choose your clothes or choose your furniture.

So the advance of AR system is you will see yourself in the picture. It’s just a live image of yourself, or it’s a live image of your room. And then it can superimpose a picture of the new clothes onto your body, also superimpose a 3D picture of the furniture in your room. So you can actually see the future object you may possess will look like in your current environment. And I think that’s really useful for people’s

everyday life. And that’s what people are trying to do. We’re trying to make AR system available for more majority of the public.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I remember talking to a computer scientist and he, we started talking about Pokémon Go.

Joyee: Mmm, yeah…

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And I was like, “Pokémon Go is like AR,” and he’s like, “That’s not AR.” What is your opinion? Do you think Pokémon Go superimposing images, and you’re trying to find that–you know, catch that Pokémon Go in your phone; that’s not the same thing as AR.

Joyee: Well I don’t want to go against computer science.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: No [laughs].

Joyee: See, I’m not from a computer science major. I have only basics of computer science or image processing. But in my opinion, I think he may be true because he’s looking at a much higher level understanding of what augmented reality, but I feel like in my opinion, just for public, you can see Pokémon Go as a basic AR system because if you turn on the AR camera that’s functioning the program, you will have a Pokémon, which is artificial object, to align an image of your real environment. So from the mental level, that is an AR system.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I agree with you.

Joyee: I know, right? [Both laugh.] But I’m not a computer science so you can totally don’t trust me, because in the real AR system, your AR should interact with your environment instead of just being a superimposed picture onto environments.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I do want to get into your dissertation. You were saying that you’re dealing with lenses. And I remember talking to you earlier about helping with AR and VR because you want to turn 2D images into something that feels more 3D. So can you tell us a little more about that. Like, if you’re trying to explain how to do that to a non-electrical engineer or a computer scientist, apparently.

Joyee: It’s about how we perceive a 3D object, as human being would have two ways of perceiving depth information in your environment. One is accommodation, is how your lens in your eye is tuning. And the other one is—

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Parallax, right?

Joyee: Yes! You got it!

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yes! Astronomy! I didn’t even let Joyee finish. It’s parallax.

Joyee: Yes, it’s the same thing, both being used in astronomy and used in your biology in terms of how your eyeball move when you look at different object. You have two system: parallax (how your eyeball is moving physically), and accommodation (how a lens is contracting or relaxing when you’re looking at an object at a different distance. And your brain use this two information to have full depth information in your perception.

For the current VR system that I know, people usually do 2D image–a set of 2D image–to give the illusion that you’re looking at a VR system. But the problem is here you only have the parallax effect and your lens won’t accommodate to the picture because the screen is always on a screen that is at a certain distance from you. And your eye won’t accommodate, no matter what image is showing.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So for our listeners, we’ll just explain parallax really quick. So, like, if you were to look at, like, an exit sign in a room. You point at that exit sign with your finger. You cover one eye, you know, cover one eye and look at your finger and then cover the other eye and look at your finger, and your finger will have appeared to move, right? ‘Cause you’re looking at one object from two separate locations. One eye is at one position and the other eye is at the other position, so that depth is kind of combining those two images.

So, and what you’re saying is if you’re trying to focus on something, like let’s say, your computer screen. And you’re focusing on a computer screen and then now you’re looking at a chair that’s, like, across the room. And then your eye is adjusting. You have this lens in your eye that’s going to change its focal length, which means how, where it focuses, right?

Joyee: Yes, that’s called accommodation.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. So you’re saying that in VR right now, they can deal with this, like, your eye being in two different locations. They can deal with that and make it look like it has some depth to it. But it’s not putting in that second part of the depth of the lens inside of your eye changing.

Joyee: Yes, because the image is always on a certain screen. And that screen’s not moving, so your brain thinks, “I don’t have matching information.” The brain thinks you’re poisoned and your brain makes you feel dizzy because it’s, the body reflects that to make you puke out or whatever it thinks is poisoning you.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.

Joyee: So that’s why a lot of you will feel dizziness when they are using VR system. And my project is trying to design this tunable lens so instead of projecting the image onto a plain screen, we are trying to project image, every single pixel of the image, into a 3D space right into your eye. So your eye is forced to accommodate to the image at different points at different distance from your lens.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff [whispering]: Wow.

Joyee: So that’s forcing your brain to have both parallax and accommodation.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I love that you said that because I have heard reports of people not really liking VR because it does trigger their motion sickness, and like you were saying, the body feels like it’s being poisoned so it starts to get dizzy and want to throw up whatever poison that is.

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Joyee: Yeah, the dizziness is actually the body trying to protect you.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.

Joyee: It’s being very smart.

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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We now to go to the exhibitor and artist floor, where we talk to Amy Ray Hill about her art and how it’s inspired by science.

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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’re at GeekGirlCon in Artist Alley. My daughter and I actually come to Artist Alley every year and do a commission. And I don’t know where she is right now, but we’re gonna get one. I’m at Amy Rae Hill Arts, at your booth, and it’s beautiful. And I just see a ton of cups with the moon. How did you get into painting astronomical objects on all of these cups, dishes? They’re beautiful!

Amy Rae Hill: Man, so many different avenues. Like, I have always loved sci-fi stories in movies and other books that I’ve read and games that I’ve played. I also like it as a metaphorical for confronting change and confronting new worlds, new possibilities that happen. So, I think just like a combination of all those interests came together. And the pottery element of it came from working at a pottery studio, so it all just like, fused into one thing.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And you actually went to Western. You just said that, so…

Amy Rae Hill: I did, yes.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And so, like, did you start doing pottery at Western?

Amy Rae Hill: No, actually I was doing, like, completely different things at Western. I was doing painting and a large scale—

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You’re still painting!

Amy Rae Hill: Yes, I still am painting [both laughing]. But now I’m painting ceramics, although I was painting on large scale canvases back in the day. And they weren’t related to space or time, but I found that interest kind of after Western.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So how did you find it?

Amy Rae Hill: I think it just kinda came together at a perfect point where I was playing a game that was about being stranded on the moon and trying to, like, discover—

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What game is this?

Amy Rae Hill: Lifeline.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.

Amy Rae Hill: It was a text adventure game. And you have help an astronaut kind of find their way around this moon who has no knowledge of exactly what to do in a survival environment (which neither do I) [laughs].

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Amy Rae Hill: So it was kind of interesting to explore that. And then, I’ve also, through like making space art, found a lot of planetary scientists, other astronomers that I met online, that have given me a lot of inspiration too.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Were you intimidated by the sciences before you started making these friends?

Amy Rae Hill: I don’t know that I would say intimidated, but I guess, kind of like I didn’t want to go into painting something I wasn’t super familiar with. And so it was kind of like they opened a lot of doors to different things that I could study for my work and make sure I really knew what I was portraying in my art. So I think they just kind of inspired my creativity.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Can you tell us a story about learning about a science fact that helped your art be more accurate?

Amy Rae Hill: Let’s see… yeah, I guess, like studying–I’m just thinking of brown dwarfs right now, was a good example.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. Give us a definition of a brown dwarf.

Amy Rae Hill: A brown dwarf is a celestial object that is somewhere between, like, a planet and a star.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, it didn’t quite ignite, right?

Amy Rae Hill: It didn’t quite get there [laughs].

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Its core has not been fusing helium from hydrogen.

Amy Rae Hill: Exactly.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Amy Rae Hill: Yeah, so I was looking at it from kind of an artistic point of view, and going in and really looking at, like, the colors of it and kind of realizing, as an artist looking at stars, you’ve got a lot of brighter colors. There’s light coming from, like, the inside of it.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And you do have some stars here, too. And I really like what you just said, that you’re painting–you know, stars are emitting their own light versus reflected light. So how do you, how do you do that as an artist?

Amy Rae Hill: I guess, yeah, that’s a tricky one. So, with something that is not emitting its own light, it’s getting light from somewhere else. So you’ve got to think about what direction that light is coming from. So, for instance, when I’m painting a moon with craters and things like that, I’ve got to think about which side of the crater is going to have a light spot, which side is gonna have a dark shadow, and keep that consistent throughout with one, like, darker side. With a star, it’s a little bit less consistent and you might have light around the entire thing and maybe layering it differently.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Ooh, wow.

Amy Rae Hill: I might use—

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff [laughing]: You’re like, “I’m totally interested in this!”

[Amy Rae laughs]

Amy Rae Hill: I could go on for, like, three hours.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.

Amy Rae Hill: But that, I might use a sponge to wipe away some color, because if you do that, it will look like the light is, like, coming through the color, I guess.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Ohh.

Amy Rae Hill: This is more like adding the shadows on top of the moon. And with a star, it’s kind of wiping away layers to make the brightness come through.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: This is, I mean, I find this super fascinating. We don’t learn this stuff as science majors.

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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’d like to thank Torrey and Joyee for taking the time from their busy DIY booths to talk to us. If you’d like to see our guest’s amazing work, follow them on Twitter @amyraehill for Astro ceramics, and for Torrey’s cosplay @tereshkova2001.

Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Seattle, Washington at the Washington State Convention during GeekGirlCon 2019. Our producers are Suzanne Blais, Barbara Clarke, and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineers are Zerach Coakley, Julia Thorpe, and Erin Howard. Script support by Ariel Shiley.

If you missed any of our show, go to our website sparksciencenow.com. And, if you have a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at sparksciencenow. Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

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