Physicist Diandra Leslie-Pelecky will deliver the Sigma Xi lecture: “The Science of Speed: Faster, Stronger, and Safer” from 3:30-5 pm on Tuesday, March 11, 2014, in Life Sciences, Room 111. All are welcome. Leslie-Pelecky is the director of the West Virginia Nano Initiative and professor of physics at West Virginia University.

After watching a NASCAR crash on TV, she became interested in the science of speed. To learn more, she worked in the lab and on the racetrack, speeding around the Texas Motor Speedway and talking to mechanical engineers, aerodynamicists, chemical engineers, and physicists to learn more.

The result was a book, The Physics of NASCAR, and a blog, buildingspeed.org, in which she explains the math and science behind what happens in motorsports.

Sigma Xi, a scientific research society, is a non-profit group of nearly 75,000 scientists and engineers who have been elected to the Society because of their research achievements or potential.