Train Scholarship (Genaro Rivera)

  Genaro Rivera November 17, 2022 Accelerometer Here, I created an equation that represents the forces in the x direction and the y direction for the acceleration of a weather balloon. My team entrusted me with handling the accelerometer. I created a formula to represent the forces in the y-direction. To calculate the upward buoyancy force, you need the formula Fu = (Pf)(V)(g)  where Fu  is the upward buoyancy force, Pf  is the air density, V is the volume, and g is the acceleration due to gravity which on earth is always 9.8 m/s^2 . I did the calculations and got the ay equation you see above. I kept Pf and R as variables because  because the air density changes as you go up, and the balloon increases in volume as you go up as well. Additionally, I defined the downward force as Fd = ma.  which is newton’s second law of motion and 6.3896 newtons of force downwards. I created the free body diagram. In the free body diagram, I included the force of the wi...

  Genaro Rivera November 11, 2022 Train Scholarship Blog MATLAB Week 9   Pre-allocating arrays and Vectorization (saving time by creating faster codes). Pre-allocating Pre-allocating creates a faster code; the tic and toc function calculate the speed of the code. The picture on the left shows code without pre-allocating; no pre-allocation is inefficient. MATLAB runs step by step. Here, it first creates a 1 by 1 matrix ([1]) and goes through the loop. Next, MATLAB repeats the for loop and creates a 1 by 2 matrix ([1 2]). Afterwards, since I specified 100 steps (1:100), MATLAB will continuously create new elements in the matrix. MATLAB performs 3 steps when computing the for-loop function. MATLAB finds memory for new matrices, copies and pastes the data for the new matrix, and deletes the old matrix; this takes time. The picture on the right shows code with pre-allocating; pre-allocating is efficient. Here, MATLAB repeats the same process as I described when it has no ...

  Genaro Rivera November 4, 2022 Faulty Temperature Sensor This week, I was working on a weather balloon payload. Here, I tested temperature sensors connected to a portable circuit board: copper boards with copper shapes glued to an insulator replacing wires in a circuit (instead of wires, circuit boards use paths to connect electrical components, so the flow of electricity gets from one electrical component to another) . However, the temperature sensor, AKA sensor temperature sensor 2, in port 0 was faulty. I switched the sensor from port 0 to port 3 to see if the issue was the port and concluded that the port was not the issue. I also concluded that the sensor itself was the issue and not the wire because if the wire was the issue, then the sensors would display no data; instead, the volts would be 0. To fix the issue, I soldered on a new sensor as seen below. I cut the wire to get rid of the broken sensor; since out of the two sensors on the payload this was the one going on...