[Osta-board] Earth-science project

[bcarlsen]

Hello board members,
    This is a bit of earth space science from Martha Dibblee (our  
conference program booklet editor)'s son-in-law.  It might be  
something that your students might try!  ;-)    Enjoy the videos,   
Bernie

----- Forwarded message from dibblee at hevanet.com -----
     Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:14:10 -0700
     From: MARTHA DIBBLEE <dibblee at hevanet.com>
  Subject: Aerostat

Today Susan's husband Josh (who's the AV supervisor at the Ptld Art  
Inst.) sent this email:

" ... one of my student workers [Page Stephenson] came in late  
yesterday...just about 10 min. After he told me why, I asked him why  
he was working here... He told me he was giving a presentation at  
Intel on a project that was funded in part from a grant he received  
from Intel. Basically, he sent some kind of weather balloon into space  
with a special camera. He had no tracking system to be able to find  
the balloon after [it landed] so he decided to attached his friggin  
iPHONE to it with a GPS app he downloaded. I don't know the specifics,  
but the balloon is supposed to pop at a certain altitude...his balloon  
and camera went into space. [the pictures of space are absolutely  
beautiful; the video shows the balloon bouncing around & then later he  
provides pictures of the smooth ride in space; the transition between  
atmosphere & space is amazing!] He said he wanted to prove that he's  
not a rocket scientist, but just wanted to show everybody that anybody  
could do this...

He launched the camera from the Bend area and chased it with his  
iPhone GPS tracker...it landed in Kenewick, WA."

Check out the vid he made:

http://vimeo.com/pages411/aerostat

http://vimeo.com/30067977

Here's the rest of the email thread:

 From Page Stephenson upon being ask'd about project: "Lol I can  
assure you the video is not BS, the phone was sealed as well as having  
an extra battery pack for heat. When I found it, it not only wasn't  
frozen solid, it had missed calls. I wouldn't have found it otherwise.  
Plus lying to a group of intel engineers that paid for it would have  
been a pretty sour move on my part ha ha."

"The balloon reached an altitude between 103,000 - 108,000 feet, with  
an accent rate averaging 970 feet per minute. The balloon traveled 89  
miles and the total trip was roughly 2 hours and 35 minutes."



----- End forwarded message -----