The Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton (Southampton, England) has joined with Elks-Smith Landscape & Garden Design to create a light-themed garden at RHS Tatton Flower Show (22 to 26 July, 2015; Cheshire East, England) to help celebrate the United Nations 2015 International Year of Light.
The ORC has hooked up with BALI Design Excellence award winning garden designer Helen Elks-Smith to design a garden that takes visitors on a journey into the world of photonics and its foremost communications channel, fiber optics.
The pavilion roof reflects a "holey fiber" structure (used in microstructured and photonic-crystal fiber). The parallels between this type of fiber and plant structures (vascular bundles) is highlighted. Set into the pavilion floor are fiber-optic glass "drops," created as part of the fiber-fabrication process. These and the waveform in the path through the garden are a metaphor for how light reflects internally along the fibers.
Perspex (a form of Polymethyl methacrylate, or PMMA) polymer rods within the landform reference the fiber preforms in the fiber-drawing process. During fiber fabrication, the preforms are heated and drawn out into lengths of optical fiber.
Highlighting ORC's fiber-optic technology
The garden highlights the advances in fiber-optic technology brought about by research pioneered by the ORC. Scientists at Southampton's ORC invented the key underlying optical-fiber technology that allows long-distance data transmission for the Internet, and also invented the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) that allows repeated transmission of data over thousands of kilometers.
"Significantly, the optical fibers that form the infrastructure of the internet and the fiber amplifiers that power it may be likened to the incredible symbiotic relationship of roots and fungi that our world would be barren without," says Deanna Standen, ORC's marketing officer. "Many of the fibers fabricated at the ORC have uncommonly similar structure to many plant stems, seeds, and other organic matter that nourish our planet."
Scientists from the university's public engagement and outreach programs will be plying their trade in the garden on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd July during the show.
