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Blue Indentation
Elizabeth Allaway �07, Ryan Rimmele �07, Richard Li �07, Nate Beck �06, and George Scherer
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
This is an indentation in glass made with a pyramidal diamond tip (called a Vickers indenter) as part of a lab in CEE 364 Materials in Civil Engineering. The goal was to make a flaw of controlled size and measure its effect on the strength of the glass—but the result was a thing of beauty. The color results from crossed polarizers that indicate the shape of the stress distribution.