View Proposal #131
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| ID | 131 |
|---|---|
| First Name | K |
| Last Name | Stroyan |
| Institution | University of Iowa |
| Speaker Category | faculty |
| Title of Talk | Retinal disparity via computer |
| Abstract | The horizontal separation of our eyes causes the image each eye receives to fall on a slightly different portion of the retina. This difference is called "retinal disparity" and has been studied extensively for its relation to depth perception. (This kind of depth perception is called stereopsis. Helmholtz' book in 1910 is an old "standard" reference to this) Recently a psychologist friend mentioned that he was studying how retinal disparity changes as a driver views two objects off to the side of the road. He also mentioned that most of his colleagues are "math-o-phobic" and used rather coarse approximations to retinal disparity. I wrote a Mathematica animation to show the motion of the eyes of a driver and compute the time derivative of retinal disparity. We corresponded sending graphs via email until I had a start at what interests the scientists. The math is simple vector geometry with some arc tangents, but it is a little messy, so I didn't immediately look at the formulas. When I did, I had a surprise. And I believe the surprise means we could train better users of mathematics if we worked towards better integration of modern computing in basic math. We hope to build a web-Mathematica site for psychologists to use for their computations. |
| Subject area(s) | Trig and basic calculus |
| Suitable for undergraduates? | Yes |
| Day Preference | |
| Computer Needed? | Y |
| Bringing a laptop? | N |
| Overhead Needed? | N |
| Software requests | Mathematica |
| Special Needs | |
| Date Submitted | 3/21/2005 |
| Year | 2005 |