In April 2013 a couple of us from BYU traveled to New York to take some pictures of dissected whale larynges in Dr. Joy Reidenberg's lab at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. This was part of a larger project to study whale vocalization.
While we were there, a humpback whale washed up on a beach towards the eastern end of Long Island. (See the news story here.) We joined a group that was in charge of the whale necropsy (an autopsy on an animal). They put me in charge of taking pictures (truly one of the more memorable experiences of my life!)
At one point the whale's flipper (about 12 feet long) was suspended from an excavator. I walked around the flipper, taking 15 or 20 pictures from different angles. Later, back at BYU, my students made a 3D computer model of the flipper using the pictures. They've since machined models of the flipper and are now using the models to study humpback whale flipper hydrodynamics. Here's a screenshot of the flipper (the square base is used to mount the flipper in a wind tunnel).
Several weeks ago we decided that nothing says "Merry Christmas" like chocolate humpback whale flippers. So I modified the flippers to make a chocolate mold:
Using my desktop computer-controlled milling machine I made a wax block with the flippers,
poured food-grade silicone over the wax block to make flipper molds,
poured in some chocolate,
and after some experimenting, the results:
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