WSM Spring 2005

Spring 2005

A Once-In-A-Career Project

Any engineering student can recount how wind-induced vibrations and poor aerodynamics caused “Galloping Gertie,” the first Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge, to swing wildly and collapse into the channel during a storm November 7, 1940.

More than 60 years after that failure, a group of Washington State University engineering alumni are helping to build a new bridge next to the one that replaced the original in 1950. The effort began in 2002 and is expected to cost $849 million. It will be the largest single project ever undertaken by the Washington State Department of Transportation.

“It’s a dream job for me and a lot of the … » More …

Spring 2005

Tough Microbes

They might not eat nails, exactly, but these tough little critters might hold the key to some heavy-duty environmental cleanup. » More ...

Spring 2005

Pumpkin Physics

". . . two, one, drop!" the crowd roared. It was a smashing way to demonstrate Galileo's law of falling objects.

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Spring 2005

No Blank Slates

A WSU researcher uncovers the ways parents can help babies develop emotionally.

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Spring 2005

New Zealand mud snails: A tiny gastropod is a major problem here—not there

They have already invaded the Snake River, Yellowstone National Park, and lots of other sites. They can reach population densities greater than 300,000 per square meter, carpeting stream beds and changing the way nutrients cycle through the ecosystem. It was a little difficult, though, to explain all of this to the gentleman who wanted to confiscate my snails. » More ...

Spring 2005

Alumni Achievement Awards

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Spring 2005

Where Water Meets Desert

Among locals, you occasionally hear the word "wasteland" used to describe sagebrush-studded lands that biologists prefer to call native shrub steppe. It's impossible to take such a harsh view when Robert Kent is your guide to the Columbia Basin Wildlife Areas. » More ...

Spring 2005

The Tie That Binds

No matter what you want to blame--predatory pricing, vertical integration, foreign competition, globalization, urban sprawl--the fact of the matter is, rural America is packing it in. At least the rural America of our memory or imagination. » More ...

Spring 2005

Baseball is a Family

We hear about his time with the Padres; about teammates Dave Winfield, Willie McCovey, and Tito Fuentes; how he'd faced Hank Aaron and Johnny Bench and Pete Rose and Joe Morgan; and how a tear of his rotator cuff had brought an end to his major league career. » More ...

Spring 2005

The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theatre

Seek out and interview 12 of the most creative and highly respected directors of the American musical theatre, and let them reveal how they went about directing some of the most important and influential musicals of the 20th century. No easy task, but that’s exactly what Lawrence Thelen (’93 M.A.) successfully accomplished in his new book, The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theatre.

The book brings together the wide-ranging and diverse approaches of its contributors, and reading it is like bringing these famous directors into your own living room for a casual, yet highly informative chat that is peppered with such phrases … » More …