Accelerometer Options

After meeting with David, I realized the ME's accelerometer equipment is not suitable for our portable arrangement. However, it appears that the SS's accelerometer equipment may work just fine for our experiment. I hope to meet with Dr. Jordan in the coming week and inspect the equipment they have. On another note, the ME dept does not appear to have any motors which would easily suit out needs.

Outreach Plan

I emailed Doug Goforth at NASA to discuss some of the concerns he had about our outreach plan. I will post his reply when I receive it, but here is what we're looking at right now:

We are now planning to set up a competition among area schools to fly a small, automated experiment along with ours. We will have to take measures to ensure the safety of their design (we will likely require that it be self-contained, within a certain weight limit, etc.). We plan to have only 1 ground crew member (Gary), so we can allow 3-student teams plus a teacher, which is within the 5-member GC limit. This will be a little more meaningful than just a random drawing after our presentations.

They may only need to be there on one flight day. Travel arrangements can be made with Lamar to use a school van to bring them to Ellington that day. The students will be responsible for designing, building, transporting, and possibly loading their experiment. We should be able to easily create a slot/space within the framework of our own experiment into which theirs can fit.

One question I had for Doug Goforth is if we could allow two separate HS teams (one for each flight day) to participate? There wouldn't be more than 5 GC members at one time, but this would allow more students to be involved. I'm not sure if having two teams is wise, due to the time involved in making sure their design is safe, etc., but I just wanted to know if this was an option. I also asked if they would be required to attend the first day or if they could just come for the one flight day?

I feel that this is a viable outreach program, and aside from a few administrative concerns, Doug Goforth seemed to think it was workable. Since we are so close to Houston, travel is not an issue. This would also introduce high school students to the RGSFOP and the design/proposal process, which will hopefully encourage them to participate at the college level.

One question for the high school teachers is if this could fit well with the high school curriculum, especially in the AP and advanced science courses?

Let me know if you have any ideas or concerns.

Window Box Planters

We have two choices for the box planters that are readily available at Home Depot/Lowes:

1. 24" L x 5.5" H x (7.5"/4.5" tapered) W
2. 30" L x 5.5" H x (7.5"/4.5" tapered) W

Around the outside is a slight lip (~.5") where the edges are curled under.

Given the plant spacing (5 cm apart) we can fit 36 plants in the smaller one and 45 plants in the larger one. The disadvantage to using the larger one is that it seems rather long, and may be problematic when transferring during the flight. I feel like the 24" would be best. Dr. Zhou's idea earlier was to plant them in pots in 3 x 3 rows, and use 3 or 4 pots at a time. This setup would yield 36 plants at a time, so the 24" planter would accomplish this. If Dr. Zhou feels we need more plants, we can just strap on a second planter or use the 30".

The price for the 24" planter was $6.23 ea, and for the 36" planter was $6.73 ea.

Let me know if you see problems with this, or have any other ideas that would work better.

Vibration (Shaker) Table Design Website

Came across this today, looks like we might use some of the ideas from this for our vibration table.

Shaker Table

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Proposal Responsibilities

I. Technical

• Jordan
• Corey

II. Experiment Description/Safety Evaluation

• Jonathan
• Gary

III. Outreach Plan/IV. Administrative

• Tiffany

Linear Actuators

I found a couple of different actuators that will work for our applications. I have the PDF files on my flashdrive if anyone wants a copy. I also sent in a qoute request form to the company so we can get an idea on the cost. I will continue to look for more products that will work.

Accelerometer Info

The good news is that the ME department does have 2 accelerometers. After checking the spec sheets these seem as if they will be acceptable for our experiement, but not optimal. Hopefully we will be able to find an accelerometer with a lower frequency range. Maybe Dr. Jordan's accelerometers can serve this purpose.
I will set up a 'small' experiement to determine if these accelerometers will meet our purposes for the 'big' experiment. This will need to be conducted this semester. I do not believe that our 'small' experiment will require the use of the actuator.
David will be able to install LabView on a personal laptop (Tiffany's), but he has to remove it after our experiment is complete.