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WHAT: A media availability to demonstrate how ºÙºÙÊÓƵ professor Bruce White helped the San Francisco Giants make PacBell Park a pleasant place to play and watch baseball, instead of a park that had winds even worse than Candlestick. WHEN: 1:30-2:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 12 Where: The Atmospheric Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel at ºÙºÙÊÓƵ, located in the courtyard of Bainer Hall VISUALS: White will position a scale model of PacBell Park in the wind tunnel, then produce an air stream that simulates the site's prevailing winds. The air stream will have contrast material in it to make it visible. He'll show how the original orientation would have created gusting winds in left field and whirling winds in the infield. Then he'll shift the model to show how he revised the layout so that the stadium walls act as a wind block. DIRECTIONS AND PARKING: From Interstate 80, go north on Highway 113 to Hutchison Drive exit. Turn right on Hutchison and travel to LaRue Road. Turn right on LaRue and travel around a curve to the left to Bioletti Way. Turn left on Bioletti. Turn right off Bioletti Way onto Bainer Hall Drive. Bainer is the second building on your left. Find the courtyard by turning left just past the first building, which is Engineering II, and then watching for the courtyard on your right. The door to the wind lab will be marked for you. The most likely parking opportunity will be in the lot at the corner of LaRue and Bioletti. Media can park free for any length of time in any space on the campus; reporters in unmarked cars should place a business card on the dashboard. BACKGROUND: In July 1995 the officials of the San Francisco Giants baseball team asked White, a professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering and an authority on Bay Area winds, to evaluate their plans for a new waterfront stadium in San Francisco. He reviewed the stadium design and made suggestions about reducing wind problems. Then he tested scale models of two designs for the park -- the original plan and a modified plan, based on his suggestions. He gave the Giants a startling answer: Either design would be much windier than the team's existing home at Candlestick Park, which was widely despised for its wind problems. But White also provided the solution: rotate the second of the stadium designs 90 degrees. That's just what the builders did. White has also used wind tunnels and scale models to study urban air pollution, San Francisco skyscrapers, and sandstorms on California's dry Owens Lake and on the planet Mars. The ºÙºÙÊÓƵ wind tunnel has a fan that is 8 feet wide and powered by a 75-horsepower motor. It can produce wind speeds up to 20 miles per hour. The PacBell scale model is built at a scale of 1 to 600, so one inch equals 50 feet. The model is approximately 4 inches tall and 18 inches wide. Wind speeds in the scale model are measured by "hot-wire anemometers," small heated wires, attached to a probe system, that are cooled by airflow over them.