My name is Rose Kirk-Landry and this was my final week interning in environmental engineering at the Energy and Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Monday – Last week I was finally able to get one of our temperature sensor to report data to my computer as a csv (comma-separated value) file. In order to take more than one reading at once at our extended temperature analysis site on Thursday we needed this to work on all of the sensors and computers. This was a lot easier said than done. I wrote up a page or so of instructions of what hoops to jump through to get the multiple softwares to download and work and in what order. Unfortunately there were still a bunch of new errors and bugs that came up on the different devices. We made a lot of progress but didn’t get all the way to successful reporting with all three systems. For lunch, the other interns and I took a walk down to one of the coffee shops on campus and saw a sword.
Tuesday – I did a brief ten minute long temperature analysis inside the office to get some data to test our csv writing extension as well as try to figure out how to graph the data. I changed the reading of the sensor by holding it in my hand or waving it in the air to get some drastic shifts we could clearly see in the graph. After about 15 tries we still couldn’t get the graph to work. We spent the rest of the day researching and working on new code.
Wednesday – We spent the day in the library troubleshooting our sensors and programs for our analysis the next day. Unfortunately since we only had one usb-c adapter we would only be able to collect data from two sensors despite there being three of us.
Thursday – We went to the Red Butte Gardens to have a picnic lunch with a bunch of different people from the EGI and CME offices as well as finally conduct our extended temperature analysis. After we got some food, the other interns and I set up our sensors near the amphitheater area. One sensor had an overheating issue when the sun shifted and the other one’s power cord somehow came loose but notwithstanding that we were able to hit our goal of one hour of data.
Friday – The other interns and I had lunch with our mentor Ting at a nearby sushi restaurant. After that we went back to campus and worked on getting our csv data from Red Butte into a graph using python. In the last few minutes we figured it out! The sharp changes are when the sun suddenly shifted from behind the trees we had our sensors under.
Other – I finished up all (well almost all) of the pottery pieces I made in my time here and even sold a few. I also completed a few more of my projects at the climbing gym.
Rose, such a well-rounded experience! Your pottery is stunning and it sounds like you are learning a ton! Keep up the great work.