This publication is the companion piece to “This Must Be the Place,” a 3D realization of my conceptual photography work exhibited in the Anderson Courtyard at VCU's 2019 School of the Arts MFA Show. I photograph scenes from nature and reproduce these images onto flattened plexiglass planes, arranging them in new, natural environments and photographing them again. The outcome is a scenic collage in which two unfamiliar locations become superimposed. It is my hope that as people experience the work they become a part of the texture of it.

The aim of the thesis is to put a transparent scaled PMMA model of the pressure swirl nozzle into operation, which includes, the selection of working fluids and the preparation of a test set to allow measurements using optical methods (LDA, PDA, PIV, high-speed visualization). The theoretical part describes the basic theory of atomization, optical measurement methods and deals with the problems of optical transition in optically complex systems. It also includes an extensive search for transparent liquids and materials of enlarged models that have been used in experiments, which often aim to match light refractive indices between these materials. In the practical part, attention is paid to the preparation of the test set and tests of chemical effects of several selected liquids on PMMA material are conducted, including a summary of experience with their use, as there was a permanent damage to the material. Several LDA measurements followed, using kerosene, p-cymene, 1-bromonaphthalene and water, evaluated the effect of the refractive index difference on the results. It turned out that no observable influence occurred if the refractive index difference between the nozzle material and the liquid was small. In addition, a visualization of internal flow through a high-speed camera was made. The practical part closes the static pressure measurement in the nozzle chamber, where the pressure ratio was measured on the walls of the chamber as well as on its axis. The measurement confirmed that the pressure on the chamber walls is constant and varies with the distance from the chamber axis.

This thesis is aimed at a very detailed process of a transparent plexiglass used for manufacturing an upstand of a gramophone. The diploma work is mainly focused on various types of the plexiglass, its attributes and the gramophone’s upstand production. Several manufacturing technologies of a plexiglass such as division of a board-type semi product, precise milling, grinding, polishing and thermal treatment are provided in this diploma work through a very detailed description of a production process of a gramophone’s deck. The outcome of this thesis is a description of individual technologies and the economic evaluation within the real business environment of AZ Plastik company.

This thesis deals with grayscale e-beam lithography and diffractive optical elements fabrication. Three topics are addressed. The first topic is combined grayscale e-beam lithography. The goal of this task is combining exposures performed by two systems with various beam energies. This combined technique leads to a better usage of both systems because various structures can be more easily prepared by one electron beam energy than by the other. The next topic is the optimization of shape borders of exposing structures that are defined by image input. The influence of such optimization on exposure data preparation is evaluated, as well as the exposure time and the change of optical properties of testing structures. The possibility of deep multilevel diffractive optical element fabrication in plexiglass blocks is researched as the third topic. Plexiglass can replace the system of a resist and a substrate. A new approach to writing down the structures by electron beam is presented, minimizing thermal stress on the plexiglass block during the exposure. The writing method also improves the homogeneity of exposed motifs. A method for computing the exposure dose for specific multilevel structures was designed. This method is based on the existing model of proximity effect computation and it minimizes the computing time necessary to obtain the exposure doses.