Day four: Is that a tomato in the sky? Nope it’s CSULB’s blimp!

Starting off the day, we were divided up into two groups to go around to three stations. The first for me was learning how to use the GPS units. Although I have never used the Trimble, I have used a Magellen which is very similar and allows you to collect data straight into ArcMap. They were very similar though; I just needed to play with it to get a feel for the layout. The next one was learning how to use a phaser – pretty badass right? This phaser was actually an XRF, which is X-ray flouresence to detect the elements in a sample of your choosing. This would be super useful when sampling soils and trying to determine the amount of K,N, or P found. Dr. Lipo then lectured a bit on the physics behind this. Ok, so it would not disintegrate someone, but x-rays are fairly dangerous so it is still a phaser in my mind. Lastly, we learned how to use a light spectometer, which utilizes the electromagnetic spectrum to analyze the refletence of light off an object.
After our equipment training stations, Dr. Lipo lectured on Easter Island’s history. Although brief for everything he knows on the topic, it intriqued me to consider the agriculture research project more.
We ended our day with some blimp flying. It wasn’t really a blimp though; it was more of a large red balloon with a kite that had a camera tied to it. The process should have been more fun, but one of the rig’s lock was broken which caused some problems with letting out and pulling out slack. This caused some stress, but some amusement later on when the pictures were downloaded. There were many pictures of the boys underneath with scared faces.
All in all the day was good, and I was glad it was not full with lectures and was more hands on.