Some great ideas are born out of years of painstaking research. Others are gleaned from the plotline of the movie "Twister."
Some great ideas are born out of years of painstaking research. Others are gleaned from the plotline of the movie "Twister."
The latter is how Paul Markowski, professor of meteorology, and Yvette Richardson, professor of meteorology and associate dean for undergraduate education, Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, set a course to create and launch probes into storms to, as they put it, "revolutionize our understanding of how tornadoes form."
In "Twister," probes are launched into a storm by using cruise control to drive a truck filled with sensors into a tornado. Penn State researchers, seeking to fill a void in thermodynamic data captured in and around storms, began seeking ways to devise something similar.
Using a pair of helium balloons, Scott Richardson, senior research associate in meteorology and atmospheric science, devised a low-cost delivery system for commercially available probes. The 13-gram probe uses two balloons to achieve altitude before one balloon is remotely jettisoned, allowing the probe, carried by the remaining balloon, to drift with the winds.
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Image Credit: Penn State
