My last week in Salt Lake City was pretty mellow as we were primarily just wrapping up all of our projects.
Monday was centered around working on the video.
The view from the roof
We went up to the roof of the Student Union and filmed the vent and the surrounding area. We also got some footage of setting up to perform a triax test on a rock core sample in Eric’s lab. Besides working on the video, we also got the CO2 sensor to read correctly (although this was short lived as the next time we tried it, it was back to 5,000 ppm).
Tuesday was Pioneer Day, a state holiday that celebrates the roots of the Mormon religion in Utah.
Triax Testing setup
I began to pack up my things and continued to edit the video. That night, Valerie and I had a nice dinner and hung out for the evening.
On Wednesday, a new CO2 tank came in so we resumed our bench scale experiments. We performed four more tests; two on the smaller vent with a higher flow rate and two tests on the large vent. For the larger vent, we added baffling to try to make the air mix better. However, this did not improve the vastly differing concentrations by much.
Thursday Aaron showed us how the data from the experiments gets processed to create the graphs that show the results.
To do this, there is a lot of code that needs to be applied to the data to get the timing to line up for each data set.
Results from our experiment
We then showed him how to use the Xbee devices to live stream data. We also helped him set up an Xbee to stream data from the COM port on the Picarro to his computer. However, there was a baud rate issue, so the information being streamed was not correct.
Friday was the last day in the office and it was fairly mellow. We helped Aaron figure out the Xbee and Picarro set up and finally got it so that it was transmitting the correct data clearly. We then built the smallest scale vent out of dryer ducting and a small fan. Brian came in for lunch and brought Thai food to celebrate our time there. We showed them our final video and talked about the internship. We got off after lunch so I went home and finished packing up all my things. That evening, my Dad arrived and took my host family out for dinner and ice cream in Trolley Square.
Saturday morning we said goodbye to Valerie and Nayra and drove back to Telluride where I was greeted by two happy dogs and my mom and brother.
Words cannot express how grateful I am to have had such an amazing opportunity. I would like to thank the Pinhead Institute for providing me with such fantastic mentors and an awesome host family. This experience would also not have been possible without my dedicated mentors in the CSER group, as they made each and every day in the lab fun and exciting. These past six weeks are definitely ones that I will always remember!
What an awesome 6 weeks of learning you’ve had Lexie! Your video documents it all so well… really nicely done!