Tag Archives: IoT

“The Moon is Orange” – When the Air Gets Visible

On the way to summer camp yesterday morning, my kids pointed to the sky and said “look the moon is orange!”

The strange thing about bad air is that it is usually abstract until it is not. It turns out, that was the sun at 8 am on a ‘sunny day.‘ There was so much ash in the air that you could directly stare at the sun with the naked eye, even mistaking it as the moon.

On Thursday morning, Cleveland’s sky made air quality very concrete. The sun looked filtered, the horizon was soft, and everything had that slightly apocalyptic orange-gray cast that we have now learned to associate with Canadian wildfire smoke.

A dim orange sun over Cleveland streets through heavy Canadian wildfire smoke.
I took this photo from my car at 8am. Smoke from Canadian wildfires dimmed the Cleveland sky on July 16.

And so I wondered if we could turn this situation into a little project of our own.

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A Tiny Rocket Altimeter, Or How To Make Model Rocketry Slightly More Complicated

My 8-year-old has been into model rocketry for the past few years. Like a lot of good hobbies at that age, it has the right mix of building, anticipation, mild danger, and a satisfying countdown.

The only problem is that we live in Cleveland, and Cleveland winter is not exactly the most launch-friendly operating environment. Model rockets and lake-effect snow do not have a natural partnership. So for a good part of the winter, we talk about launches, plan launches, look at parts, imagine future launches, and wait.

A model rocket launch setup on a grassy field with launch gear nearby.
The launch-day setup, finally outside after a winter of planning. That on the mount is an Estes minimum diameter rocket called Hi-Flier

Somewhere in that waiting period, the project shifted from “let’s launch rockets” to “what if we could measure what the rocket is actually doing?”

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