Science Fun

On this day in 1987, hot weather was persistent in the forecast for the day. In the Pacific Northwest, it was extremely hot with temperatures over 100 degrees reported as far north as southern British Columbia. In Yakima, WA, it was reported a record high of 100 degrees, while temperatures near the Washington coast were reported around 60.

Thunderstorms prevailed from southwest Texas to New England. Thunderstorm winds gusting to 100 mph at Gettysburg, PA killed one person. High winds and large hail caused more than five million dollars damage to property and crops in Lancaster County, PA. This historical data from Storm Data at the National Weather Service.

Ever wonder where paper comes from? Paper is such a versatile product that is used in so many things, that I wonder what we would do without paper. Well, here is a quick history on paper and how it has evolved over the years. Now, in a short posting, we cannot cover all aspects of paper, so we will just give some highlights.

Paper is essential to writing; however, writing came many years earlier than paper. What did they write on in those ancient times? Early on in the human race, our primitive ancestors wrote, painted and carved at first on walls in caves, and then rocks and stones, and then they migrated to writing and carving on sticks, wood, shells, bones, and of course stones.

The Clay Tablet was one of the earliest forms of a medium that civilizations wrote on. The major disadvantage to the Clay Tablet was that if it got wet, it would fall apart, get slimy, and the writings would not be legible. Also, if a fire broke out, the clay would be baked in the heat of the fire (this has preserved the tablet and any of its writings, giving the archeologist a specimen to study and decipher the ancient writings.

Papyrus was created by the Egyptians when they took the slender leaves of the papyrus plant and laid them side by side, and then layered another set of leaves, going the opposite direction. This early form of writing medium was the first type of ‘paper’ that was brought into existence. The natural glues within the plant bonded the leaves together, the Egyptians that worked with the Papyrus to make it smooth. They used brushes and ink to write on it.

We shall continue or history lesson on ‘paper’ beginnings in another post.

This week, I only did one geocache advenuture on Tuesday, a week ago today was washed out with rain.  Tuesday, the first cache was a did-not-find, and the second cache was a to-be-continued as you had to search out clues to find the coordinates, which I did, and it was a history lesson.  So, I will post this adventure when I have completed the whole thing.

This weekend is Field Day - a weekend long contest for amateur radio operators.  The goal is to see how many contacts you can make during the contest time, by operating in different modes.  Field Day is supposed to be an opportunity for you to take you equipment and setup in a mobile / portable location, to simulate an ‘emergency’ type of setup where you may not be connected to commercial power.

Some folks run their Field Day contest from the comfort of their home based station, others go outside, but into a sheltered area such as a picnic grove, and yet others, will actually go into a field or forest and setup their operation.  Stations will run a variety of equipment that is either powered from commercial power, battery power, generator power, or there are even those that will solar power their stations.

Field Day and many of the contests are sponosred by the American Radio Relay League.  Amateur Radio is a fun and exciting hobby that allows you to make contacts with individual all over the world.  Give it a try! 

We continued into this week with the rainy and cool weather staying with us. Saturday was mostly cloudy for pretty much all day, then by early evening, the rains started. Sunday we had a high of 65F and the low was 60F with showers for most of the day giving us 0.24 inches of rain.

Monday we went back to work with cloudy skies and more rain. The high for the day was 63F and the low was 58F. 0.34 inches of rain fell for the day. Tuesday continued with the clouds and light rain for a total of 0.05 inches. The high on Tuesday was 65F and the low was 60F.

Wednesday we started to see improvement in the weather as the sun started to make some brief appearances. We still had a little light rain to start the day with a total of 0.07 inches. The high was 66F and the low was 61F.

Thursday was the best day of the week with the high of 76F and the low was 59F. The best thing about this day was that the sun was out for most of the day and there was no rain. Things started to dry out! Friday started out sunny and the temperature soon hit the upper 70s, rising from the morning low of 63F. By late afternoon, thunderstorms arrived on the scene and were quick, but left 0.17 inches of rain.

For the next few days, the forecast is for sunny days and pop up thunderstorms! You just never know what the weather is going to do. How warm did it get where you are? How much rain did you get?

It amazes me each week when I search for the material for the next post in the rocketry series. The more I look, the more I find of all kinds of interesting facts about the marvelous machine that took the astronauts to the moon. With the technology of today, it should not take long to return to the moon and travel beyond.

This week, we continue our exploration within the Instrument Unit, which is the assembly, perched atop the third stage of the Saturn V. With thousands of gallons of toxic and explosive fuels, and the complexity of the systems that ran the Saturn rocket, it was very important for the safety of the astronauts to have systems in place to monitor and react to any complication that may arise from the spacecraft.

Within the Instrument Unit, there was a section of equipment that was responsible for monitoring the spacecraft systems, the Emergency Detection System (EDS). The primary function of the EDS was to monitor the vehicle during the boost phases of the flight, which was where there was concern for a system malfunction that could cause a failure. The EDS would react in two ways to an alert, it would trigger an automatic abort sequence if a break up was imminent, or if it was a slow failure, it would alert the astronauts by a alarm in the Command Module. Once the decision was made (either manual or automatic) to abort, the process was irrevocable and it went to completion.

The EDS had distribution points and equipment throughout the entire space vehicle. Within the Instrument Unit, the EDS had nine rate gyros located in section 15. These gyros sensed the yaw, pitch, and roll of the vehicle and fed data through the EDS distributor to the flight computer and flight data control signal processor. The EDS distributor monitored data coming in from points throughout the spacecraft and provided alerts to both the astronauts and the ground team.

The EDS distributor also contained the logic analysis systems to process the data necessary for an automatic abort sequence. This system was locked out by a timing circuit that ran for 30 seconds starting at lift off, this would prevent an automatic abort from being initiated that could result in the spacecraft falling back into the launch area. The astronauts did have the ability to initiate an abort sequence manually if there was a two engine cut out during this 30 second window.

Next week, we will look at the radio communications and telemetry instruments. Voice, data, and video feeds kept the ground control stations in constant contact with the astronaut crew. Witnessing the first man to walk on the moon in a live televised event would not be possible without the reliability of the communication systems.

Our word for the week is Phosphorous. It is a chemical element with the atomic number 15 and the atomic weight of 30.9738. Phosphorous forms the basis of many compounds; by far the most environmentally important are phosphates. All plants and animals need phosphates to grow and to function. In natural water areas, the growth of algae and plants is limited by the amount of phosphorous. As phosphorous increases, so do the plants and algae that grow in the water.

Phosphorous pollution, caused by things such as sewage treatment facilities and farm run-offs, affects the growth process of plants, in particular in aquatic areas. Phosphates have to be balanced to achieve the right growth process.