Mixing of (Ocean) Water

Today in our 8:00 am science honors class, we learned about the thermohaline (thermo:temperature and haline:salt content) circulation that occurs in the Earth's oceans. We were given the task to create 'the Atlantic Ocean' in a small plastic container. To create the thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic Ocean (which is due to density differences in different parts of the ocean), we needed the dense water from the pole to sink and flow towards the equator, the water at the equator to stay on the surface and flow towards the pole, and intermediate water to stay in the middle.

Courtesy Wikipedia

The materials that we had to work with included: water, hot plates, dye, salt, ice/snow, and cardboard. We were given 45 minutes to create our mini ocean masterpieces.

First, we created three solutions of water: cold salty polar water (blue), hot equator water (red), and temperate water (yellow). We filled one side of our container with snow to represent the glaciers at the pole, and one side of the container was placed next to a hot plate to simulate the warming at the equator. Finally, we filled the container with the temperate water, added the hot water at the 'equator', added the cold salty water at the 'pole', and watched the circulation occur!

--Olivia and Michael

Take a look at our video:

Team Lineup

This is the team lineup. Note that the questions we are trying to answer are subject to change.

Russel

Team Members:	Team Sparkles Dan Hammers Dan Schulz Ruthanna Wantz
Balloon Name	Russell
Question to Answer:	How does the amount of ultraviolet radiation absorbed by ozone affect temperatures in the stratosphere?
Our Hypothesis:	We expect that the amount of ultraviolet radiation detected will increase with altitude, and temperature will increase accordingly.

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Dug

Team Members:	The Flying Monkeys Andrew Redman Ronald (Bub) Duttweiler April Peterson Sarah Kopa
Balloon Name	Dug
Question to Answer:	How much infrared light is absorbed by the atmosphere at each altitude?
Our Hypothesis:	We believe that more infrared light will be absorbed at the top of the atmosphere.  As our balloon rises, we hope to see more infrared light in proportion to visible light.

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Kevin

Team Members:	Team Maple Leaf Michael Ganger Olivia Morse Kayla Miller Jordan Scott
Balloon Name	Kevin
Question to Answer:	How does the concentration of CO2 change as altitude increases?
Our Hypothesis:	Compared to other gases in the air (N2, O2, etc.), we expect that CO2 will be less concentrated farther up into the atmosphere. Put simply, the percentage of CO2 will be less at high altitudes.

Cuba Lake: Not the tropical island

Recently the high temperature in Houghton has been 20°F. While most students have been hiding inside their warm dorm room drinking hot chocolate, the science honors students are always up for an adventure. During Monday's lab we (minus Andrew and Sarah who were sick) drove to Cuba Lake to take some water samples. First Dr. Wolfe showed us how to drill the hole through the 12 inch thick ice using the ice drill. 

Fun fact of the day: You need around 4 inches of ice for walking, 8 inches to support a small car, and 12 for a larger truck. 

A thermometer was lowered meter by meter to find the temperature of the water with depth. We used a capsule with a weight attached (called a Kemmerer water sampler) to collect water samples at various depths. With frozen hands we managed to take the pH of each sample and bag it for concentration readings on Thursday.

This data will help us to determine if it is a eutrophic or oligotrophic lake. Eutrophic lakes contain a large amount of nutrients that support plant and algae growth while oligotrophic have little to almost no nutrients. The clearer the water, the more oligotrophic. The oxygen meter was not working properly but after being there for an almost an hour we decided to leave before we got frost bite. At the end of the day we were all very thankful for wool socks and warm mittens.

Thanks to Michael's backpacking GPS we were able to track our exact location:

-Kayla

Dodgeball

"Hey! Who wants to play dodgeball? I signed science honors up to play in the tournament on Friday!" This was the conversation that began our western civilization class last week. Soon, we were all on board. Our eight player team would consist of: Bub, Michael, Andrew, Dan, Ruthanna, Kayla, Olivia, and April.

We decided then and there that science honors would dominate the competition with our dodging ability. Who could possibly beat the forces that our team would bring?

Full of team spirit, we arrived at the tournament and began our stretches. We sat in the bleachers together as the rules of the game were explained (there were a lot!). Soon, the first match-ups were announced, "Science honors will be playing the baseball team on court A." We looked around at each other in disbelief as we faced the toughest team in the competition.

Our fans cheered as we entered the court, and the game quickly began. After a few minutes of incredible dodges, throws, and ninja moves, our team was defeated. Three more intense rounds of dodgeball were played by our science honors team resulting in one win throughout the night. Overall, the dodgeball tournament was a fun experience for our team as we dodged, danced, and laughed together!

-Olivia

Radiosonde Project - Overview

So, what exactly is this "Balloon 2014" thing all about? Seems obscure. Probably irrelevant. And what in the world is a radiosonde?

Hopefully, this post will enlighten you. Read on to find out.

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Overview

The Houghton College Science Honors group, hereafter referred to as "Science Honors," intends to collect data from the atmosphere, analyze the data, and draw conclusions. So, what does this actually mean?

You've probably never heard of a radiosonde, however you probably know what a weather balloon is.

Well radiosonde is really just a fancy scientific term for the part of the weather balloon that does all the work. The radiosonde takes all of the measurements, stores it all as data, and sends it back to the scientists on the ground.

A few years ago it would have been impossible for anyone but climate scientists and weather stations to build a weather balloon, however the price of parts has become cheap enough that it is feasible to build one on a relatively small budget.

The relative altitudes of Mt. Everest, airplanes, and weather balloons. 

Collect Data
This is done using a weather balloon. Though it won't carry people like a hot air balloon, it will certainly do more than a party balloon. Sensors will take measurements about temperature, pressure, and the amount of visible light. 

Analyze the Data

The balloons will return "raw" data. These data correspond directly to readings from the sensors, not actual conditions. We need to look at the raw data and convert the numbers we receive from the sensor into real data which has significance. 

Draw Conclusions

Obviously, if you're going to collect data, you want to use it for something. We will use the data to either prove or disprove our original theories. When we have a more definite view of what we will be measuring we will make another post describing our hypotheses.

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Picture credit to NOAA

Requirements
Physical Balloon
The balloons will be traveling high into the atmosphere. We hope that they will be able to reach the stratosphere, nearly 20 km above the ground! 

Electronics
The balloon will be run by a small computer, called an Aruduino, which will need to be wired with sensors to take readings. An Arduino is not a very powerful computer, however it is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and runs on very little power.

Arduino Uno Microcontroller

Programming
The balloons will be programmed to continually take measurements. These measurements will then be saved on the balloon so they can be downloaded after it is retrieved, as well as wirelessly transmitted in case the balloon is lost.

We have begun working on a protocol to transmit the data back to our computers on the ground. If you're interested, take a look at our last blog post that explains this in more detail. 

--Andrew, Michael, Kayla, Dan, Olivia

BORP020314

Before you read the rest of the post, try and figure out what the title means. Pretty cryptic, huh? (kinda looks like a product number)

BORP020314

Obviously, you shouldn't know what it means (because we made it). But what if I told you that the number was actually the date? Instead, you would read it as such:

BORP 02-03-14

We can take it farther. The name BORP is our abbreviation of Balloon Over Radio Protocol. Now our title reads:

Balloon Over Radio Protocol 02-03-14

Let's go back to the date and take the title one step farther:

Balloon Over Radio Protocol - February 3, 2014

This is way easier to read; however, it takes a lot more space (47 characters vs. 12). This is almost 4 times longer. So, say I want to send a message to the International Space Station. That's pretty far, but sending the final title (the 47 character one) will be fairly easy. But, what if I want to send 100,000,000,000 messages to the Space Station. In this case, the quicker message would be Title #1 (BORP020314). As long as the astronauts on the Space Station know the protocol, they should be able to interpret the data.

In other words, a protocol is just a fancy way of agreeing how to send messages. This is what we are working on for the balloon project right now. The balloon in the air has to send large quantities of data to the ground; the computer on the ground has to know how to interpret this (the data transmission).

An analogy: The United States Post Office

The USPS processes an enormous number of mail parcels (around 100 billion). So, they should read this post and make their own protocol, right? That would be smart; it turns out they already have one:

<Name>

<House #><Street>

<City><State>

<Zipcode>

Look familiar? That's because it might be one of the best implemented protocols ever (disclaimer: I have no citations for this). Everyone knows it. And as a result, mail gets to your door within a week or two.

--Michael

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Thus ends the easy part of the post. Everything below is for the technically adventurous .

Our current design for the BORP utilizes a 32-bit header to label each data packet transmitted from the balloons, described below.

Byte 0: The first byte of data will included in the header will tell which balloon is transmitting, and how important the data is.

• Bits 0-1: BID - Two bits have been allocated to the Balloon Identification (BID).
• Bits 2-3: Priority - The next two bits will be used to give the packet a priority level. 
• Bits 4-7: Open - The last four bits will be used for new flags in the future.  

Bytes 1-16: The next sixteen bytes of data will be an MD5 Checksum of the data being transmitted. This makes sure that the data has not been corrupted.

Bytes 17-20: The next four bytes include the time the transmission was sent (not the time the data was collected). Between a constantly changing time stamp as well as different data and MD5 Checksums, no two packets should ever be identical.

Bytes 21-24: These four bytes will be the timestamp of the data (when it was collected).

Bytes 25-26: These two bytes hold the "window size" of the data. They say how large the data being transmitted will be. This will be used to parse the data and will help delineate between different sets of data.

Bytes 27-31: These last five bytes of data have been left open for development. We may use them for something in the future, however we currently have no use for them.

Each balloon will have a Master-Slave relationship with the main computer on the ground. The "Master" computer on the ground will send out requests for data to each balloon. The balloons, or "Slaves", will respond to these requests by broadcasting the data.

We are planning on creating an Arduino library in C that will handle all of this. When it is fully implemented we should be able to call the BORP() function on a set of data and have it transmitted back to the "Master" computer on the ground.

--Andrew

Houghton College Science Honors

This semester in Science Honors we're starting to work on our weather balloons. We will be keeping this page updated as we move along with our project. 

Look at us making the blog!

After a whole semester of learning about weather patterns and climate change, we're finally starting to brainstorm about how we are going to do our project. This semester we will be making weather balloons that record data and beam it wirelessly back to our computers on the ground. The eleven of us in Science Honors at Houghton College have formed three groups that will each be making their own balloon. Even though we won't actually be doing much physical work on the balloons until next semester, we've started brainstorming about the design of the balloon and programming.

Science Honors Runs on Oranges