Digital Maps and Relative Elevations
I have spent many years on mapping projects starting from my early days back in 1992 working on maps for The Nature Conservancy. I started at the National Zoological Park’s research labs in Front...
Science & Technology Outreach Blog
Teaching Students to Design and Prototype
Working to effectively teach prototyping. The accessibility of computer assisted design (CAD) tools for 3D modeling is outstanding. Tools like Blender, Rhino, SolidWorks, and Fusiuon360 are just amazing...
Listening in on Jupiter, or at least trying to do that.
Trying to hear Jupiter Members of the Ducks on the Air Amateur radio club, a group that I advise, gathered in February 2022 to see if they could listen in on Jupiter. Is there...
The Totality of NASA Eclipse Soundscapes
Two thousand twenty-four hosted the second total eclipse crossing all the way across the USA in just seven years. From the perspective of scientists, eclipses present time for experimentation. This year was not going...
Emergency Radio Build
Emergency Radio Build In the winter of 2021, my colleague Scott Rosenfeld and I received an Amateur Radio digital communication (ARDC) grant to help fund radio equipment. This was for a new HAM radio...
AC Current, Detecting it Both Ways
Detecting it Both Ways Makerspaces are phenomenal hands-on learning spaces. They make it easy to teach what some might consider to be extremely abstract subjects like electronics, particularly if an instructor encourages the building...
Seaweed
Seaweeds Documenting your stuff is useful and sometimes quite important, and a seaweed collection certainly comes under the category of stuff. The Oregon Institute of Marine Biology sits in the Coos Bay region of...
Early History of UO Research: A Glimmer of the Ocean
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE OREGON INSTITUTE OF MARINE BIOLOGY (OIMB) The Oregon institute of Marine Science has had a very interesting life. The University of Washington’s Friday Harbor was a likely inspiration...
Plumbing Pipe Music – Building a PVC Flute
Last week, while watching various people play the bass guitar on Instagram, I was presented with a video of a person playing a home-made stringed instrument. This guy, Nicholas Bras, was certainly having...
Tracking Birds Across the Globe as they Pass By the University of Oregon – MOTUS Tracking
Earth Day 2022 With loss of habitat around the world, many of our migrating bird species are in great decline. This is because these globe flying birds use multiple areas during different...
Search & Rescue on a Local Scale – Radio Transmitter Hunts
This last Saturday 25 people including about 10 University of Oregon community members gathered at one of our local parks by campus to work on a transmitter hunt to find a hidden...