Vibes: Materials, Sound, and Humans

Every material has a vibe: The atoms in your beer glass are arranged differently than the ones in your aluminum can, and that invisible architecture decides whether something bends, breaks, or bounces back. Join metallurgist Libby Urig for a tour of the hidden microstructures that make materials strong, weird, or ideal for spacecraft. From the old-growth lumber that woodworkers prefer to why a paperclip will break if you bend it too many times — it all comes down to the vibration and structure at the atomic level.

When engineering teams are building a complex, groundbreaking technology, the obstacle to overcome is not usually the technology (don't get me wrong, technology can be hard). Rather, the true obstacle is the human element of the project: cultivating empathy to build solutions that account for the real world (not just ideal scenarios) and conversations between people translating from one discipline to another. Join us to learn how human-centered design works to overcome the persistent obstacle engineering teams don’t want to talk about: passing the vibe check.

Living in Hampton Roads we are all familiar with the pulsating beat of a helicopter passing overhead. Loud and disruptive? Yes. But still much quieter than they used to be and soon you’ll know why. What about air taxis? They might be commonplace in America skies in a few years, and many will take off and land like an oversized drone, so making sure they don’t sound like oversized drones is going to be key. But have no fear! Your humble speaker is working on both issues! She and her team brave the wastes of the American west to take real world acoustic measurements of full-scale vehicles.