McNeese LA-ACES Group Sound Experiment Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility Palestine,Tx May 2007 Results 5/24/2007
Overview Flight Objectives Results Conclusion Special Thanks Velocity Tropopause to Stratosphere information Spectrograms Stratosphere information Conclusion Special Thanks 5/24/2007
to measure the wavelength of the sound wave. There is an arrival time LAG between the two microphone, that we can use to measure the wavelength of the sound wave. Sound with a simple sinusoidal signal With a fixed frequency of 500 Hz Microphone 1 Left channel Microphone 2 Right channel 9 cm Speaker MP3 Digital Recorder Stereo HQ (44100 Hz Sampling Frequency) 5/24/2007
Results from our experiment (room temperature, 21 Celsius, sea level) 5/24/2007
Flight Objectives Primary Objectives Secondary Objectives Record environmental noise Measure the velocity of sound as a function of altitude Design a payload that will run and protect our experiment Secondary Objectives Finish extracting and examining our data 5/24/2007
Velocity The standard atmosphere data curve is based on calculations using average atmosphere temperatures (v=(331+0.6T)m/s) In Tropopause T is constant (-57C) Sources of error for our experiment could be that the tropopause is not an ideal gas or our experiment was not reliable in this area of the atmosphere. 5/24/2007
Tropopause to Stratosphere Transition The sounds are from the Stratosphere to Tropopause descent. The waveform shows the entire Tropopause to Tropopause ascent and descent. 5/24/2007
Spectrograms BLayer 5/24/2007
Spectrogram Stratosphere 5/24/2007
In the Stratosphere After zooming in on the sound in the stratosphere we see a nearly perfect sine wave with little or no other noise. This tells us that there really is no wind at that height. 5/24/2007
Conclusion The experiment ran almost exactly as we predicted. The measured velocity followed closely the theoretical model up to the tropopause. The tropopause was the only section where we could not figure out what happen, because it didn’t follow the model or our predictions. The experiment ran the duration of the flight and lost no data. 5/24/2007
Special Thanks Dr. Santostasi Mr. Archer NASA Staff La-ACES groups LSU organizers 5/24/2007