Englewood High School Students Capture History with Laser Technology
Imagine taking a valuable, even priceless, historical object, and making an exact duplicate of it. Not a model, but a perfect copy that contains all the information of the original.
That is exactly what the students of the Communication Technology program at Englewood High School will be doing in February. Led by course instructor, Mr. Bill Pugh, students will learn advance display techniques in their school’s laser and holography laboratory.
This may sound like science fiction, but it’s actually high technology: the technology of futuristic laser holograms. Holograms contain a 3-dimensional image that is so real, the viewer thinks the object is really there. But what they are looking at is a holographic image. Recorded with lasers and made entirely out of light.
A component of the three-day Englewood student experience will be recording historical artifacts recovered from the wreck of the famous steamship Maple Leaf that sunk during the Civil War in the St. Johns River. The artifacts are being provided through the Museum of Science & History (MOSH) in Jacksonville. Also, historical artifacts that were saved by local Holocaust survivors will be recorded. The artifacts are being provided by Ms. Gail Berzins, an Englewood High School teacher.
Facilitating this program will be Frank DeFreitas, a professional holographer of 25 years. DeFreitas will instruct and oversee the student work and the recording process.
"Not only will the students learn and experience advanced imaging techniques using lasers, optics, and photonics, but they’ll be doing so in a real world working environment," DeFreitas said. "As far as my knowledge goes, and it goes back many, many years, this is the first such student program of its kind in the United States."
The holograms will be on display at the MOSH and other exhibits in the future,
but the project doesn't end in Jacksonville. One hologram will be selected to travel to London, England for exhibit at an international conference titled "Holography in the Modern Museum." The conference will take place on September 19, 2008, at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. A multimedia presentation, documenting the Englewood High School students work process will be shown to a world-wide audience of attendees.
