I know I have been a slacker and have not updated the blog, so I will just throw out a little synopsis of my Labor day weekend in Boston.
I went to visit my friend Chris. He is a smart ass(double masters from MIT), but we went to school from 1st grade through our senior year in college. This was my first time in the Boston/New England area. The weather was great: low 70s, sunny, and a nice breeze.
The house where I stayed was pretty crazy. 7 adults, 2 18-month olds, and 2 babies under 3 months. A solid night's sleep was nonexistent(not that I am complaining :P). I also got stuck in Philly for 2 extra hours because I missed my connecting flight by 10 minutes, but that allowed me to see some of the South Carolina/NC State game.
Spending time with "Frankie-stein" (Chris's 1.5 year old daughter), I was encouraged that I was not clueless about children and felt like I was somewhat competent. (I did not have to do any of the hard stuff, though, hahaha.) But all the other crazy stuff (everything having to do with have a child) is very intimidating. Who knows where that puts me.
Overall, the weekend was great. I got to go to the Children's Science museum, MIT campus, and to Rockport, Mass (a small town on the coast).
One of the things that Chris and I wanted to do was to figure out if my compressed gas cannon idea was even feasible.
I have messed around with the physics but was never able to get a definitive answer with the math. We used an interesting selection of resources from plain old Thermodynamics text books to Wikipedia.
We calculated that to get 1 kg object to LEO, you would need about 2 kg of Oxygen and 0.5 kg of hydrogen. This is a good thing because it is not a ridiculous amount of gas that it would not even be possible. The next hurdle was the conversion of the energy from that explosion into heat or delta T (difference in temperature).
This is where we hit a roadblock. After doing some calculations using the specific heat formula, we come up with the delta T of 6000 degrees C, which just happens to be the temperature of the sun's surface. So that made us think delta T is incorrect.
After consulting the text books and searching online, the only real way we found to get this information was to actually blow up some gas in a bomb calorimeter. We don't have one, so basically we said we would just start to do some experiments with H2 and 02 and see what we might get.
Furture steps:
1. Create a setup for producing and capturing 02 and H2 through electrolysis.
2. Design/build/make up a fixture for exploding the gas- Chris's idea is an old engine block.
3. If results are above average, convert fixture into a cannon.
I went to visit my friend Chris. He is a smart ass(double masters from MIT), but we went to school from 1st grade through our senior year in college. This was my first time in the Boston/New England area. The weather was great: low 70s, sunny, and a nice breeze.
The house where I stayed was pretty crazy. 7 adults, 2 18-month olds, and 2 babies under 3 months. A solid night's sleep was nonexistent(not that I am complaining :P). I also got stuck in Philly for 2 extra hours because I missed my connecting flight by 10 minutes, but that allowed me to see some of the South Carolina/NC State game.
Spending time with "Frankie-stein" (Chris's 1.5 year old daughter), I was encouraged that I was not clueless about children and felt like I was somewhat competent. (I did not have to do any of the hard stuff, though, hahaha.) But all the other crazy stuff (everything having to do with have a child) is very intimidating. Who knows where that puts me.
Overall, the weekend was great. I got to go to the Children's Science museum, MIT campus, and to Rockport, Mass (a small town on the coast).
One of the things that Chris and I wanted to do was to figure out if my compressed gas cannon idea was even feasible.
I have messed around with the physics but was never able to get a definitive answer with the math. We used an interesting selection of resources from plain old Thermodynamics text books to Wikipedia.
We calculated that to get 1 kg object to LEO, you would need about 2 kg of Oxygen and 0.5 kg of hydrogen. This is a good thing because it is not a ridiculous amount of gas that it would not even be possible. The next hurdle was the conversion of the energy from that explosion into heat or delta T (difference in temperature).
This is where we hit a roadblock. After doing some calculations using the specific heat formula, we come up with the delta T of 6000 degrees C, which just happens to be the temperature of the sun's surface. So that made us think delta T is incorrect.
After consulting the text books and searching online, the only real way we found to get this information was to actually blow up some gas in a bomb calorimeter. We don't have one, so basically we said we would just start to do some experiments with H2 and 02 and see what we might get.
Furture steps:
1. Create a setup for producing and capturing 02 and H2 through electrolysis.
2. Design/build/make up a fixture for exploding the gas- Chris's idea is an old engine block.
3. If results are above average, convert fixture into a cannon.