In the High Altitude program I got my first taste of rapid prototyping. The biology department at FHSU worked with HAB to investigate biology at various altitudes.

Our GOAL was to create a device capable of looking at biology at a specific altitude. We also wanted the device to be reusable, as relatively light, accurate, and cost effective.

The group RESEARCHED OPTIONS  which led to 3 ideas, one that used timing, one that used GPS, and my method, which relied on expansion of air. I looked into the ideal gas law. From there I verified my the expansion factor using a vacuum chamber.

At this point I hadn't devolped my engineering process and  the BLOCK DIAGRAM wasn't used.

Next I UTILIZED SOFTWARE, specifically AutoCad, to model the apparatus. I chose to design a 18" cube frame. The petri dish was centered in frame and secured closed with rubber bands to alow the device to open at altitude. On each face were 4 expansion chambers to operate the device as a function of altitude.

From here the 3 PROTOTYPES where compared and prepared for flight. the TESTING & EVALUTION ment sending them to the edge of space via a helium balloon. Upon retrieval my apparatus was nowhere to be found, either having exploded due to expansion or ripped apart after catching on a tree. The evaluation led to the decision that the other two systems should be combined as the GPS provided superior accuracy in collection, however the overall device that used the timer was a superior build.  After 2 launches that collected samples the prototype was set asside when the faculty member in the biology department left the university. This year 1 hybrid prototype is shown on top with its block diagram shown below. The evaluation by my peers was bar none as we got first place in the universities research presentation

The next year we decided to consult with area schools to provide an opportunity that we wished was available to us before college. For the Research side of the project we worked towards replacing the expensive Labquest we were using for data collection with a more cost effective solution based on the Arduino Mega. In the first TESTING launch a failure occured that caused data to be not collected, the evaluation led us to try again, however a catastrophy durring flight led to the payload being lost. Due to my time schedule the project was handed off to the next group of students. As the years have gone by the documentation of this lost payload has gone the way of the payload itself.