The halfway point in my internship comes with a twinge of sadness, as it means my time here is winding down, but also with immense excitement as there is still so much to learn. Week three brought with it a myriad of different activities and learning opportunities.
On Monday, Spencer and I were able to get our Arduino boards communicating via the Xbees. At this point, the circuit was still being run through a breadboard which was cumbersome and not easy to move around.
Our finished setup for the Arduino boards and Xbees
With this in mind, we soldered on some screw terminals to the shield, then reassembled the temperature sensor circuit using the terminals. Since this eliminated a large piece of the setup, the Arduino boards can now be moved around with ease. We took the set up outside and found that these devices have a huge communication range–we got to around 800 feet with line of sight.
Tuesday we worked on an experiment for Aaron, in which we measured the mass flux of CO2. To do this, we filled a small tank with compressed carbon dioxide and placed it on a scale that has the capability to transmit data to a computer. We then opened the valve and let the gas out at a constant pressure.
The CO2 tank on the scale for our experiment
The scale sent a weight measurement to the computer once per second and using this data, we were able to determine a rough mass flux for CO2 at different pressures. That afternoon, we were given a CO2 sensor that was in the lab and tasked with attempting to get it to read data.
We were off of work on Wednesday as it was the Fourth of July so I stayed at home with my host family and played games with Nayra for the majority of the day. That evening we went to a barbeque at their friend’s house.
Thursday we worked with Eric on analyzing the Triax test data as well as writing a report on the experiments and work that we were doing. We also continued to work on getting the CO2 sensor to report data, which was much more difficult than the temperature sensors. However, we did not have much luck in getting this to happen.
On Friday, we continued to work with Eric on his rock experiments. He had us analyze creep test data from rocks that he had tested previously. Creep testing measures the tendency of a rock to change its form after being exposed to high levels of stress, which in our case is pressure. To analyze the data, we had to export the data to excel and graph it to look for trends in the change in sigD (stress/strain) of the rock as well as in the average axial and radial strain as a function of time.
Nayra, Valerie, and I at Red Butte
That evening my mom arrived for a visit and we all went to dinner then went to Red Butte Gardens to walk around.
While I am a little sad that I am already halfway done with my internship–time here has gone so fast–I am also very eager to see what the next three weeks will bring in terms of the many projects we are working on as well as the adventures my host family has in mind.
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