Apple squared
p2pnet.net News:- Alexander Griekspoor and Tom Groothuis at the Oncology Graduate School Amsterdam, The Netherlands, were the happy recipients of Apple’s 2004 Best Mac OS X Student Product.
Their 4Peaks is a program that helps molecular biologists visualize and edit their DNA sequence files.
“At last there is a decent solution for analyzing trace files on the MacOSX platform, taking another step away from slow and non-native programs from the MacOS9 period,” they say.
“Also, 4Peaks supports most commonly used sequence file formats right out of the box, you no longer have to convert them first using AppleScripts or other painstaking methods. Analyzing your sequence was never so much fun!”
Their prize was a “a beautiful metal cube” that glows when anyone touches touch it and naturally the questions arose, How and Why?
“Opening it up would be a simple solution of course, but we were afraid to break it,” the two write on their website. “Still, curious as scientists can be, we thought of something more elegant to answer the burning questions. We contacted the people of the radiotherapy department in the hospital to see if they perhaps could take an X-ray of the cube and reveal its inner being, just like people had previously done with a Titanium PowerBook and iPod. Unfortunately they told us that they did not have an X-ray machine, we should contact the radio-diagnostic department for that.
“Instead however, they did have something else: a cone beam CT scan that would even allow 3D reconstruction!”
Say no more.
“Made out of one piece of solid metal, it is not difficult to see why the cube feels relatively heavy,” say Griekspoor and Groothuis. “The scan reveals a cylindrical cavity, drilled from below to just under the Apple logo. The bottom of the central cavity is separated from the battery compartment by a circuitry board containing surprisingly many electronic parts. Also from this logic board protrude to Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) that form the light source from the cube. The fact that these are placed relatively towards the bottom of the cube in combination with a plastic diffusion filter right below the Apple logo, gives the cube it distinct glow.”
So how does it work?
“The CT scan shows that the bottom plate is electronically isolated from the rest of the cube. The potential difference between the bottom and the sides of the cube is measured by a probe in the bottom plate that is wired to the logic board. The cube notices the touch of a hand by sensing an electric contact between its sides and the bottom plate via the person touching it, a loop closed by the earth.”
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See:-
Student Product – 2004 Apple Design Awards Winners
4Peaks – Overview
beautiful metal cube – Modern Cubism
