W  i  l  l  k  o  m  m  e  n

A Short Bio

My name is Daniel Grove and I am an up and coming senior at Smithtown High School West.I enjoy going out with friends as well as playing sports on a daily basis. However, my favorite sport by far is soccer. I play for both the school team as well as a premier club team, the Smithtown Gunners. However, soccer is not the only thing I hold on my prioritys list. For school is #1 and I put the same heart and hardwork as I do into soccer each and everyday in the classroom.

Summer '07

July 9th-11th

-Start of Summer work at BNL after being at Stony Brook
-Soldering of Infrasound Board
-Calibration & testing of the board via Spectrum Lab
+sensors picked up the various clapping frequencies as well as our voices

July 12th-13th

-Magnetic field sensors placed into simple IC boards
+Linear sensors w/ a 2.5mV/gauss output
+Can we use a K-index as a reliable comparison for geomagnetic storms/fluctuations?

July 25th-27th

-installilation of NI USB-6210
-integration w/ Labview
-Magnetic sensor needs amplification:construction of amplification circuit
-Create infrasound and magnetic field VI

July 30th-August 3rd

-Finished Magnetometer & placed it in aluminum encasing & nearly ready for Data collection
-Electroscope design is finalized and ready for data collection -

2006 RESEARCH

July 11th

Today I built a Coincidence Board that will be used at Brentwood Highschool for cosmic ray counts with Oscar. The board has four simple ports that are connected to four different scintillators and the board looks for readings from all four at the same time.

             HOBO U12 (Background)

The HOBO is a versatile data logger that can be set to record many different climatic aspects for at most five days at intervals set by the user. Such capabilities include the recording of Light Intensity (lumens/ft^2), Relative Humidity (%), Temperature (F), Voltage (V), and as well as Dewpoint. However, accuracy is always the issue when dealing with data loggers, hence tests and comparisons must be done before assurance and field recordings.

              Accuracy Tests

July 12th

1st Trial

A. Measuring: Relative Humidity, Light Intensity, Temperature

B. Procedure: Keep in the Computer Room, the high bay, and outside each for a 20 minute duration, sequentially after each other. (HOBO is set to log every 30 seconds)

C. Computer Room Start: 12:37:30 Finish: 12:47:31

D. High bay Start: 12:51:30 Finish: 1:02

E. Outside Start: 1:02:30 Finish: 1:12

Data:

Summary:

Temperature readings did not reach a plateau within the 20 minute transistion period between the air conditioned high bay and the outside air.

Light Intensity adjusted quickly between locations; however, the HOBO only can measure light up to 3000 lumens/ft^2. Therefore, direct sunlight can not be recorded or anything similar in brightness.

Relative Humidity readings were also inaccurate, due to the fact that the HOBO's readings spiked from the transistion between the high bay and outside. In addition it recorded relative humidity to be the same inside as outside.

Results:

Temperature sensor needs more time to adjust and is very sensitive

Condensation from the cold temp. from the high bay and the warm moist air from outside could have created condensation

2nd Trial

Purpose: To see how long it takes to adjust temperature

30 minute durations in each location (HOBO logs every 30 seconds)

A. Computer Room start: 2:17 End: 2:47

B. Outside start: 2:47:30 End: 3:17:30

Data:

Summary

The Temperature and Relative Humidity sensors can not accurately handle extreme changes relative to an inside and outside enviornment and return fast enough to the proper readings.

July 13th-14th

3rd Trial

Purpose: Compare temperature readings from the internal thermometer to the external thermometer

Three hour Durations (HOBO logs every 30 seconds)

Computer Room Start: 9:06:39 End: 11:59:09

Outside Start: 11:59:39 End: 1:49:39

Data:

Summary External thermometer can better handle changes from cold to warm, maybe due to the fact that the internal thermometer is thrown off due to the heating of the HOBO unit itself when in sun light.

Relative Humidity sensor still overshoots when changed from cold to warm (condensation?)

4th Trial

Problem: To recieve accurate readingsfrom the external thermometer as well as accurate relative humidity readings from the internal sensor. Also to compare the external thermometer results to those of the internal.

Therefore, since recent durations have been relativly short, we'll leave HOBO out overnight from 3:55 pm to 8:37 am. Also since in all the other experiments the HOBO can not handle direct sunlight, I'll apply a filter (Film negative) over the light sensor to reduce sunlight. Also in case of rain, Idesigned a simple way to allow air circulation but keep out any kind of condensation.

Data:

Results After the HOBO was logged the following morning (July 14th). I realized that I did not have a control to compare the HOBO's data to (before the data was so inaccurate all you needed was common sense). Therefore, I used the BNL weather stations data which was already plotted and easily accessable. Hence comparing the HOBO to BNL's data, the external thermometr was assuring as well as the relative humidity readings. In addition, the film negative filtered enough sunlight that the HOBO could still detect light intensity changes (sunset to night). The internal thermometer was also accurate; however, only when the outside temperature was cool and not hot. Therefore, it is probably accurate to say that when the box heats up in the sun the internal thermometer temperature readings make inaccurate logs. For example, the internal thermometr recorded a temp. of 109, which looking at BNL's recordings was outrageous.

July 17th

HOBO's external stereo voltage output gets compared to a fixed oscilloscope's reading from an arbitrary waveform generator.

30 second logs are too slow

5 or 4 seconds more ideal

1 second the best

Results: Sine curves show similar patterns from the HOBO and oscilliscope; however, the HOBO fails to reach 0 and 2 volts. The Problem: resistance from the voltage probe which was conected to the waveform generator changed the HOBO's results. A new Cable fixed every thing.

July 18th-19th

HOBO's external stereo voltage output records now gets compared to an ocilliscope's reading from the salad bowl outside after simple static electricity is applied to the salad bowl via a glass rod that emits a charge after being rubbed by a cotton clothe. The ocilliscope recorded a stepped wave and the HOBO also recorded changes in charge. Next the HOBO gets connected to the salad bowl outside and is set to record every 45 seconds. Also the ocilliscope gets hooked up to the computer via a cable and the versatile program wavestar. Alowing us to rcord the ocilliscopes wave data as well as seeing the YT graph on compuer screen.

Problems to be solved: Compare wavestar's readings to the HOBO's data even though we compared them visually already

-Interpret Data to make sure the readings make sense from overnight

July 21st

Time to build the electrometer board -with thanx to An Experimenter's Electrometer

Also the oscilliscope that was connected to the electrometer board which is connected in turn to the metal salad bowls outside was acting on the fritz so Helio went on a search and found a portable oscilliscope better adapted to measure voltage; therefore all we could do was wait as wavestar recorded this oscilliscope's data.

July 24th

The data that was recorded by Wavestar from the oscilliscope was not correct due to its ability to not recognize differences between day and night. For example instead of graphing a fluctuating cosine-like curve betweeen day and night it read a plateau.

-So I changed the cord connecting the electrometer board to the oscilliscope

-Charged the 9V batteries back to ~8.5V

-Fixed/changed the output port and wire conection

July 25th

Today the wavestar program decided not to work on the small sony laptop so I spent the whole day trying to install the program on the other computers and trying to fix error messages in regards to communication failure between the oscilliscope and computer.

July 26th

Finally resorted to emailing tech support from techtronix Kept trying to solve nthe epic wavestar problem

July 27th

Finally solved the problem of the computer not recognizing the oscilliscope. All I had to do was dispose of the 9 pin to USB cable and just plug a data cable connected to a 9 pin D female right into the computer

Then I helped Deb finish Cosmic Chris, by measuring drill hole distances, fastening on the geiger counter and solving any other problems that came up.

August 1st

Work with LD-250 lightning detector, which can detect lightning strikes within a 300 mile radius, and try to correlate lightning strikes recorded through the detector to changes in the electric field. The detector is attached to a reciever (which has to be free from metallic surfaces due to noise) which in turn is plugged into the computer via a serial port.

August 2nd

Build 1/2 of a PVC antanae with a design relativly simple: a broad top to place the detector fastend with plastic screws and a plastic connector leading to a smaller PVC pipe which can be placed in the dock. The smaller PVC pipe also has holes drilled near the bottom to allow a data cable run from the computer/reciever box to the detector.

August 3rd

Finished PVC antanae, Installed BOLTEK and cleaned out coroded port on the detector so it could be used.

August 8th

Built a 3-D magnetic field detector using a rectangular piesce of wood a 5v regulator, 3 Allegro 15E sensors, and a data cable I stripped so I could use five of the wires of the eight wit Steph

August 9th

Finished Detector and looked atundergrad posters and presentations