danaleeling

With rain bands rolling over the ridge during the morning session, the class was instructed to meet at the dining hall. At 11:30 the sky was fairly clear. Satellite photos suggested further rain bands were headed towards Pohnpei. Given that the five data points from 0 to 120 meters at 30 Meyer intervals would be sufficient, start was shifted to near the bookstore. An early morning sortie had determined that the health clinic fence was on the ground at North 06° 54.578', East 158° 09.637'. This provided a way to extend alongside and beyond the health clinic off of a bookstore start.  Not actually true East. East is to the left. At the bookstore a North 06° 54.578' line of latitude was obstructed out around 60 meters by a Terminalia catappa.  A northward shift cleared the Terminalia catappa. The rough starting point. Looking east, wide angle Looking east, 1.0x At 2.0x from the shifted location, the Termin...

Binky was acquired at Ace Office Supply the weekend prior to laboratory seven. Binky was triple wrapped in three plastic bags. Binky was in a tangerine tree this summer. Location of Binky: up in a tangerine tree The complication this term was only a single student had an Android phone at class start.  iPhones can only display degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds to whole numbers. One arcsecond is 0.016 arcminutes. An Android phone running GPS Essentials can display three decimal places in arcminutes. In theory the Android phone can put one within two meters of Binky, the iPhone Compass cannot do better than 30 meters. Clayton, with Emars, had the only phone that was running GPS Essentials at class start. He would go on to find Binky. Clayton would quickly sort out the need to move west and was at Binky before I realized he had taken off to the west. Lost. The students seemed perplexed as to how to go about f...

The new health center brought posts, poles, and signs along with a parking area.  With the summer solstice at 13:42 Saturday 21 June 2025, Friday 20 June was the day to capture shadow directions. A first crack was made at this pole. Squaring off with the edge of the produced the shadow above at 09:27 The pole in context. A GPS Essentials compass bearing at the pole aligned with the 09:27 shadow. Note that the angle is not going to be 23.5°. That value would only be realized at sunrise. In addition, the compass being displayed is using magnetic north. There is something on the order of 5.6° difference between magnetic north and the north pole here. The intent is not to make calculations but rather just to show that the shadow is in different places during the year.  An attempt to do the same at  a sign post on the west side failed due to magnetism in the post base. A signpost on the west si...

A summer session Friday provided an opportunity to pull together a loose end and to introduce the summer solstice. The measurement of friction was tackled differently than in prior terms. Instead of directly measuring the force of friction using a spring scale tow line, a calculation was made based on the loss of momentum. The loss was calculated between two non-zero velocities, a new approach. No zero momentum. The board was brought across a 1.5 meter speed trap,  allowed to coast for 4.5 meters, and then the velocity was measured again in a second 1.5 meter speed trap.  The second speed trap Runs were started from the LRC with speeds targeting a midrange velocity of 1.4 to 2.2 m/s. This kept the roll out above 1.02 m/s. Velocity losses were 0.40, 0.27, and 0.45 m/s. Measurements were laid out ahead of class. Mass with the RipStik was also measured in advance and  a spreadsheet was prepared. Data fro...