Roof rocket: recoverable.
Roof Rocket
Month: September 2023
Rocket Launch
In case you were wondering:
Yes, the parachute deployed.
No, we did not recover the rocket.
Quality
Both Physics and Astronomy courses do a lot of work with waves, and while light is one of the most important types for study, sound is exceptionally handy for demonstrations. There’s an immediacy, a feel, that can make sonic demos feel more intuitive.
We have a few of these about, metal bars with supports at the nodes of a standing wave, seated over a wooden box. The string goes where the bar doesn’t vibrate, and hence doesn’t dampen the sound, while the box helps it resonate louder. Ka-bong! They’re quite fun.
And, yes, Carl J. Ulrich of Minneapolis, Minnesota did some fine work here.
Battery Tester
As one might imagine, hundreds of students in labs each semester means we use a lot of batteries. Just a ton of ’em.
Sometimes we need them at full capacity, but certain uses can be fine if they’ve started to develop some of that internal resistance after a while. Certain situations call for the higher potential current output of alkalines, while others need lithiums to keep the voltage from dropping too low. And at other times, the relative calm of a zinc-carbon battery is just perfect, like when students are building basic circuits and there’s a risk of shorting the batteries.
Much lower risk of booms and burns with the zinc-carbon.
Still, unless a battery’s in real rough shape, you never know how much juice they’ve got left just by looking. Pop one on the tester to see. When they’re almost new, you can hear the needle tap the far side!
Hallway Mural
In 1991, the Astronomy Club had clearly grown tired of plain walls at the Observatory. With a fantastic mural adorning the interior stairwell to access the Clark telescope (subjects of future posts!), the regular hallways must have looked… fine.
Prof. Dave Lien was the faculty member overseeing all of this, and in April the club had decided a scale version of the solar system would look pretty great. Time to check in with the Art folks!
(Also: “Observing, etc.”)
And you know what? It’s way better than white walls! The final design ended up being different from the proposed idea, though the concept is the same. The Sun occupies a place of prominence, and the mural includes both scaled sizes and scaled distances of our solar system, shown side by side.
Not both at once: in that case, it either wouldn’t fit in the building or the planets would be so tiny you couldn’t see them. Both of which really defeat the purpose. (Not that they aren’t fun demonstrations in their own right!)
Five and a half years later, ta-da! After a quarter-century, several building repaintings and a recent renovation, it still looks sharp.
Astronomy Club Minutes
In the early ’90s, we had an Astronomy Club. Reading through old club meeting minutes sometimes turns up little gems, like these:
“Sorry for the late minutes. The secretary had a lot of tests at the end of last week.”
Completely understand. Full respect for those priorities.
“Because of clear skies, the meeting did not last long.”
We’re here for the telescopes, not chit-chat! Again: completely understand!