Amazing Science Project
03/17/09 04:31 PM Filed in: Science
It really is amazing what you can do with a little ingenuity.
Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort, four high-school students from IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia built a camera rig and altitude sensor from scratch, attached it to a weather balloon, and monitored it using hand-written code to link it to google earth. They did all of this for a mere 56 pounds or about $80.
So what results did they get? Impressive ones to say the least.
Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort, four high-school students from IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia built a camera rig and altitude sensor from scratch, attached it to a weather balloon, and monitored it using hand-written code to link it to google earth. They did all of this for a mere 56 pounds or about $80.
So what results did they get? Impressive ones to say the least.
The monitored the balloon to 100,000 feet, when it finally popped due to the difference in pressure and it fell back to Earth. They had to go 10km in order to find the sensors and camera, but everything survived and they got some beautiful images.
Here is a link to their flickr page and a link to their website. Both are in Spanish, but google translate works quite well!
Originally found the story on telegraph.co.uk.