Using N Grease

Hello! I´m Luis, a Spanish student of the school Retamar. We have done a research project called Asgard II in Brussels. This project was about a balloon with a gondola (box) that rose up 31 km. In the gondola we, my team and the other participants, place the hardware.

The Asgard II research project consists of two parts: The first part is about trying to prove the perfect gases equation and Van der Waals equation and the second part involves the relation between different levels of radiation and the ozone.

Talking of the way we wanted to perform the first part, it was like this: a syringe contains a certain volume of air and a pressure and temperature sensor. An external camera records the movement of the tap of the syringe in order to obtain the volume.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem with the assembly of the syringe was that in the nozzle were a lot of wires and the air could pass easily to the interior. We expended a lot of time thinking in any simple way to close the nozzle of the syringe. Only when we saw the vacuum grease did we realize where our solution was. We wanted the Apiezon N grease (because of the extreme temperatures it would reach).

The final result was awesome: the isolation was perfectly airtight. The properties of this product made our work considerably easier.

The tap of the syringe was another goal (because it would be moving as the balloon was rising) but the solution was the vacuum grease too.

Just as a matter of interest, in the second part we wanted to measure the amount of ozone, the amount of ultraviolet rays that came from the Sun and the infrared rays that came from the Earth.

It’s a pity that the project was done with no success because it seems that the organizers didn’t connect correctly our Arduino (microcontroller) to the current. However we are going to try another launch in summertime.