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High Altitude Balloon Experiment Ideas — Parallax Forums

High Altitude Balloon Experiment Ideas

c07Brian.Kesterc07Brian.Kester Posts: 36
edited 2014-07-17 15:12 in Accessories
I am helping out with a high-altitude balloon program, where we will be launching multiple balloons a year and we're encouraging students to come up with experiments. Sometimes they have great ideas... and other times, not so much. I was hoping to get some additional ideas to serve as inspiration for when the students are struggling to come up with a cool experiment. If you've done something, or heard of something that would be interesting to college-age students, I would love to try to incorporate it. Right now, I have a number of Propeller Activity Boards and smattering of sensors, but I'm not necessarily limited to what I have on-hand. I would also be happy to get data to you if you're interested in analyzing it and want to use this as an opportunity for a free balloon launch for your idea. Anyway, any inspirational ideas would be appreciated...

Comments

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-06-19 13:49
    Wind speed and direction vary greatly with altitude; and way up high there's the jetstream. Surely you'll have GPS on board for recovery, so it seems like it would be simple to gather location data at regular intervals and make a dynamic 3D plot. You could also gather temperature & humidity by altitude, as vintage Radiosondes used to do.

    I bought a neat old radiosonde at a swap meet years ago, marked Army Signal Corps. Still have it at home somewhere, just the white box portion of this package: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Science-Fair-Project-Old-Meteorological-Balloon-Radiosonde-ready-to-go/331060320281#ht_6569wt_1235
  • PropGuy2PropGuy2 Posts: 360
    edited 2014-06-19 15:02
    I always liked the altitude, air pressure & temperature relationships. So basic yet so important if you are going to be doing anything in aeronautics and space science. Right behind that is regulating and discovering the relationship between the heat generated by the electronics package, type of battery chemistries at altitude, how to control the heat load under all conditions (electronics, sunlight or not, insulation characteristics) BTW - you can easily overheat resistor & IC type components at high altitude BC of the low air pressure does not allow easy convection, etc. Use resistor watt ratings times 4, ICs (like Prop, etc) with heat sinks. Try to find some engineer that has actually built satellites and spacecraft (NASA, SpaceX) Finally build something that can stay at altitude for an extended period of time (a few weeks) circle the globe and find its way home (some type of detachable glider) and land at an airport / or catch in a net.
  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2014-06-21 12:58
    Ideas for experiments: If you have a kid that is interested in learning a new old language, I have a bunch of stuff in FORTH that might be of interest.

    The PropFORTH data logger can log several times each second, uses a SD adapter as SD slot, and will run for months without filling up a 4Gig micro SD card. The realtime clock runs off the prop internal counter (to save the cost of an additional treal time clock part) but can drift with temperature. So measureing the and/or setting the drift compensation dynamically based on temperature might be fun.

    The PropFORTH inertial measurement unit (IMU) users the GY-80, which is cheap on Ebay and has 10 degrees of freedom. Right now it just logs the raw data from GY-80, but we are working on a kalman filter, that might be an appropriate project for a college kid.

    And of course one could quickly write new drivers for whatever other sensor or actuators of interest, as this is what forth is all about.
  • W9GFOW9GFO Posts: 4,010
    edited 2014-06-21 13:22
    Set up a ping and a reflector as far apart as reasonable and measure the speed of sound at different altitudes and compare against predictions.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-06-21 20:31
    W9GFO wrote: »
    Set up a ping and a reflector as far apart as reasonable and measure the speed of sound at different altitudes and compare against predictions.

    Most excellent idea, Rich! Temp, humidity & pressure are variables that could be quantified and tested. Assuming the Ping sensor performance is constant under those varying conditions. :)
  • mklrobomklrobo Posts: 420
    edited 2014-07-17 14:12
    :nerd: alot of sicentific data can be gathered; radiation levels, different types of light spectra that is at avaliable at different altitudes; What kind of frequencies propagate
    more at different altitudes; what kind of pollutants, if any, are present at different altitudes; measure different ozone levels at different altitudes; check to see what elements
    are more avaliable at different altitudes, if any. :blank:
  • LevLev Posts: 182
    edited 2014-07-17 15:12
    Brian,

    Some ideas:

    1. count pulses from a Geiger counter and try to detect the Pfotzer maximum (peak gamma intensity)
    2. build a multi-band photometer using LEDS and try to detect differences in reflected or incoming light (see Nuts and Volts "Near Space series of articles)
    3. Build a sun direction sensor (also in Nuts and Volts)
    4. Build a particle capturing device actuated by a servo and try to capture "cosmic dust" (iron particles from space)
    5. Identify the temperature shift at the tropopause.
    6. Use an electronic compass or the parallax gyro to detect rotation, and take photographs only when the payload is rotating slowly

    We have done all of these and others over the past years in the ballooning program for HS students at the University of New Hampshire. We launched 5 student experiment packages today, with six Propellers on board.

    Let me know if you need any more specific help.
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