5/05/05
Accomplished
Today we test fired our triggering mechanism with a few
additives. First we added a new button into the
circuit so two buttons should be depressed to fire.
Our first attempt was a failure, the balloon would not
explode probably because the mixture of O2 to H2 was not
close enough. So we went outside and tested and tested
the explosion with Mr. Roser and a match, mixed an equal
amount of H2 and O2 and we had a successful explosion.
Problems to Solve
A major problem is calibrating the timing of the flashes
and camera so that we can capture analyzable images.
Also, it would be beneficial to find a better way to fill up
multiple balloons at once.
Plan
Tomorrow we will hopefully perfect the explosion and
also synchronize the flashes remembering to set up a shield
and protection for the equipment.
5/06/05
Accomplished
Today we successfully exploded two balloons, it took a
little while to blow up the first one but we have concluded
that adding a few pumps of air into the balloon before
pressing the button ensures results. On the second
balloon the weight even moved although we did not get a good
picture of it.
Problems to Solve
Next time we need to standardize the balloon volumes and
also perfect capturing the movement of the pendulum.
Plan
We are going to take more pictures, work on our
technique and hopefully get the flashes timed so we can get
analyzable pictures.
5/10/05
Accomplished
On Tuesday, we successfully detonated 3 balloons,
getting pictures of all 3. Only 1 picture had correct
exposure however and we attribute the 2 mistaken pictures to
bad timing between the camera and the triggering of the
explosion. Our 1 good exposure did not show the
position as we wished, and more work on flash delay is
therefore necessary.
After more consideration of our method and set-up, we
decided our goal of finding the force of the explosion
wasn't attainable with what we have, so we revised our goal
to finding the maximum velocity that the pendulum attains.
We figured out that the inconsistency of the balloon not
exploding when triggered is lessened by pumping a small
amount of air into the balloon with a balloon inflator
immediately before triggering it. We do not know why
this works, but it does.
Problems to Solve
We still don't know how to time the sequence of
shutter-explosion-flash1-flash2 to achieve the best results.
The explosion and flash 1 occur at the same time, but the
human delay between shutter and explosion and the adjustable
delay between the 2 flashes are both in need of adjusting.
Plan
On Thursday, we plan to work as quickly as possible to
take pictures to get the timing of all events correct so
that we can attain the data we need. Hopefully by the
end of the day we will have good pictures to analyze and
find the speed of the pendulum with.
5/12/05 Accomplished Today we captured 5
explosions with some good results after we changed pendulums
and also used a clock and ruler to set up our measuring
tools.
Problems to Solve Hopefully all of our pictures have
been good and all problems corrected now.
Plan Tomorrow we will analyze and upload pictures and
maybe take 1 or 2 more.
5/13/05 Accomplished Today we uploaded all
of our pictures on to the computer and also successfully
captured one more explosion using the Nikon D-1.
Problems to Solve None, data collection complete.
Plan We are now ready to analyze and build our
website which we will do in the coming days. |
