Development of a rainfall rate and rain drop size measurement instrument: disdrometer.

1. GROUPS:Plan: Schedule a group meeting with me at least once a week, 1 group at a time. Discuss progress during class. Class meetings at times to keep discussing various instruments.

2. Can urban canyons be used to funnel wind kinetic energy to allow for smaller, high output suburban wind power generators? • Go around campus and town with the ultrasonic anemometer and measure winds in urban canyons. Compare with the UNR weather station http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/weather/unr.html. How much of an enhancement can urban canyons provide for wind speed? How does this change the necessary size for a wind power generator for a given electrical power need? In each case, what makes the wind greater in the urban canyon? What is the local reason for it? Is the increased wind in canyons just turbulent kinetic energy, not that useful for wind power generation? • People in this group.Andrew Joros, Erich Uher, Ben Hatchett, Brian Rae, Josh Walston • Affiliate: Josh Molzan

3. Development of a rainfall rate and rain drop size measurement instrument: disdrometer. • Use piezo electric disks of varying size. • Impact drops on the disks. Record and study the electrical signal coming from drops hitting the piezo disks. • Work on the ‘best’ algorithm to relate drop size with piezo signal. • Test the instrument with drops at the DRI fall tower on the Northwest corner of the building. Suggested group: Josh Molzan Steven Gronstal

4. Development of a Lockin Amplifier with a 24 bit analog to digital converter and USB interface. Use it to measure the response of LEDs to light of different wavelength (along with the monochrometer; cross over to the Optics Class). • People for the lock-in: Rachel Miller, Muir Morrison.People for the microcontroller programming and interfacing with the 24 bit a/d chip: Michael Gallaspy.

5. Development of a Theremin: An ethereal musical instrument: The true guitar! • An optical theremin can be constructed from the op amp circuit we studied earlier in the semester, if a second circuit is added for optically controlled gain. • Better solutions: Build one that uses the electrodynamic influence of a moving hand to change the impedance of a coil thereby changing musical pitch. • people Kyle Swanson, Daniel Hamilton, Laurel Hardiman

6. Development of a variable aperture sun photometer for measuring aerosol diffraction patterns and inferring aerosol size distribution. • Do sun photometery as we did in class, but now add in a variable aperture on the inlet to change the amount of radiation accepted into the sun photometer. Do ‘regular’ sun photometer measurements as well as those with the variable aperture instrument.People: Matthew Wallace, Kyle Carpenter.

7. Atmospheric Pressure: Transition from weather to sound • Use a relatively fast response ambient pressure transducer to measure the frequency spectrum of pressure variations associated with weather, with perhaps atmospheric gravity wavers, and with infrasound. Determine the frequency response of the motorola pressure transducers. • Use the pressure transducer to illustrate the operating principle of a pitot tube used to measure aircraft speed. • Measure resonance enhanced sound spectra for very low frequency in tunnels under I80 and in and around Reno. • People: Susan Konkol, Andrew Evans, Brian McLeod, Alena Voigt

8. Atmospheric Radiation Measurements Group • Perform spectral measurements of the downwelling infrared radiation in the atmosphere using the FTIR. Observe the transition in spectrum as the morning temperature inversion breaks up. Use the spectral measurements to infer the temperature and RH structure of the lower atmosphere. Do measurements are the time of the Reno National Weather Service balloon soundings to help with the retrieval interpretations. • Do spectral and broadband measurements of the solar spectrum using the spectrometer and some devices we have around. • Use the solar wavelength spectrometer to measure the spectrum of sky light in various directions from the solar zenith angle: investigate the spectrum and interpret. Trace gas detection with a DOAS like method? • People: Narayan Adhikari (FTIR), Charles Woodman, Aja Ellis • Affiliates: Ryan Baker, Frank Greenhalgh

9. Radon Detector • On the projects web page is a schematic and description of a radon detector design. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that often is an issue for people with basements. This project illustrates a very clever method for measuring radon. • PEOPLE: Ryan Baker, Frank Greenhalgh