Transcript GROUPS - Pat Arnott Web Site

GROUPS:
Plan: Schedule a group meeting with me at least once a
week, 1 group at a time.
Discuss progress during class. Class meetings at times
to keep discussing various instruments.
Can urban canyons be used to funnel wind kinetic
energy to allow for smaller, high output suburban
wind power generators?
• Go around campus and town with the ultrasonic anemometer and measure
winds in urban canyons. Compare with the UNR weather station
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/weather/unr.html. How much of an enhancement
can urban canyons provide for wind speed? How does this change the
necessary size for a wind power generator for a given electrical power
need? In each case, what makes the wind greater in the urban canyon?
What is the local reason for it? Is the increased wind in canyons just
turbulent kinetic energy, not that useful for wind power generation?
• People in this group.
Andrew Joros, Erich Uher, Ben Hatchett, Brian Rae, Josh Walston
• Affiliate: Josh Molzan
Development of a rainfall rate and rain drop
size measurement instrument: disdrometer.
• Use piezo electric disks of varying size.
• Impact drops on the disks. Record and study the electrical signal coming
from drops hitting the piezo disks.
• Work on the ‘best’ algorithm to relate drop size with piezo signal.
• Test the instrument with drops at the DRI fall tower on the Northwest corner
of the building.
Suggested group:
Josh Molzan
Steven Gronstal
Development of a Lockin Amplifier with a 24 bit
analog to digital converter and USB interface. Use it
to measure the response of LEDs to light of different
wavelength (along with the monochrometer; cross
over to the Optics Class).
• People for the lock-in: Rachel Miller, Muir Morrison.
People for the microcontroller programming and interfacing with the 24 bit
a/d chip: Michael Gallaspy.
Development of a Theremin: An ethereal
musical instrument: The true guitar!
• An optical theremin can be constructed from the op amp circuit
we studied earlier in the semester, if a second circuit is added
for optically controlled gain.
• Better solutions: Build one that uses the electrodynamic
influence of a moving hand to change the impedance of a coil
thereby changing musical pitch.
• people Kyle Swanson, Daniel Hamilton, Laurel Hardiman
Development of a variable aperture sun
photometer for measuring aerosol diffraction
patterns and inferring aerosol size
distribution.
• Do sun photometery as we did in class, but now add in a
variable aperture on the inlet to change the amount of radiation
accepted into the sun photometer. Do ‘regular’ sun photometer
measurements as well as those with the variable aperture
instrument.
People: Matthew Wallace, Kyle Carpenter.
Atmospheric Pressure: Transition from
weather to sound
• Use a relatively fast response ambient pressure transducer to measure the
frequency spectrum of pressure variations associated with weather, with
perhaps atmospheric gravity wavers, and with infrasound. Determine the
frequency response of the motorola pressure transducers.
• Use the pressure transducer to illustrate the operating principle of a pitot
tube used to measure aircraft speed.
• Measure resonance enhanced sound spectra for very low frequency in
tunnels under I80 and in and around Reno.
• People: Susan Konkol, Andrew Evans, Brian McLeod, Alena Voigt
Atmospheric Radiation Measurements
Group
•
Perform spectral measurements of the downwelling infrared radiation in the
atmosphere using the FTIR. Observe the transition in spectrum as the
morning temperature inversion breaks up. Use the spectral measurements to
infer the temperature and RH structure of the lower atmosphere. Do
measurements are the time of the Reno National Weather Service balloon
soundings to help with the retrieval interpretations.
•
Do spectral and broadband measurements of the solar spectrum using the
spectrometer and some devices we have around.
•
Use the solar wavelength spectrometer to measure the spectrum of sky light
in various directions from the solar zenith angle: investigate the spectrum and
interpret. Trace gas detection with a DOAS like method?
•
•
People: Narayan Adhikari (FTIR), Charles Woodman, Aja Ellis
Affiliates: Ryan Baker, Frank Greenhalgh
Radon Detector
• On the projects web page is a schematic and description of a
radon detector design. Radon is a naturally occurring
radioactive gas that often is an issue for people with basements.
This project illustrates a very clever method for measuring
radon.
• PEOPLE: Ryan Baker, Frank Greenhalgh