Nov 4 PDR of Removing Ice from Lunar Regolith

Summary

In a step towards revolutionizing lunar resource utilization, a group of high school students, under the guidance of NASA's HUNCH program, are working on a project to separate ice from lunar regolith through vibration methods. This involves simulating lunar conditions to extract usable water, aiming to support future lunar missions by providing essential resources directly from the Moon. The project not only addresses the technical challenge of isolating ice from soil in extreme conditions but also promises to reduce the high costs associated with transporting water to the Moon, paving the way for sustainable space exploration.

Highlights

• Students experiment with using a 15-inch subwoofer to create vibrations for ice separation. 🎶
• Innovative use of everyday items like a coffee grinder to simulate ice in lunar regolith. ☕
• The project demonstrates how educational programs can contribute to real-world scientific challenges. 👨‍🔬
• Creative problem-solving is encouraged, as students come up with budget-friendly solutions under $100. 💡
• Presentations show a blend of research, creativity, and collaboration aimed at practical space solutions. 🎓

Key Takeaways

• High school students are tackling the complex challenge of extracting ice from lunar soil using innovative vibration techniques. 🌕
• The project aims to support sustainable lunar exploration by reducing the need for costly water transport from Earth. 💧
• Students are leveraging creative methods like using household items to simulate lunar regolith separation processes. 🛠️
• The initiative is part of NASA's efforts to encourage practical science projects that have real-world applications beyond Earth. 🚀
• Exploring effective lunar resource management could potentially lead to long-term habitation solutions on the Moon. 🏠

Overview

A team of ambitious high school students is stepping into the spotlight as they take on the engineering challenge of separating ice from lunar soil, a crucial step for future lunar expeditions. The project is part of NASA's HUNCH (High schools United with NASA to Create Hardware) program, which integrates practical learning with real-world issues.

These young innovators are experimenting with vibration technology to achieve their goal, utilizing a surprising mix of high-tech audio equipment and everyday objects to simulate the hard lunar surface conditions. Their creativity in approaching this task is manifested through the use of regular household items, like coffee grinders, to process simulation materials.

As they refine their techniques, these students are not only contributing to space technology but are also setting the stage for how lunar resources can be managed efficiently. By addressing the issue of high transport costs associated with lunar missions, their work has the potential to support sustainable space exploration and habitation.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Team Introduction The chapter titled 'Introduction and Team Introduction' takes place at the P County Technical Institute in New Jersey, where the team is working on the 'ice from regali' Project Y. The team begins by showing the progress they have made so far and suggests conducting a test to demonstrate this progress. Team members introduce themselves as Ayah, Shaz Khan, Gavin Y, and Colin Smith.
• 01:31 - 14:54: First Team Presentation In this chapter, the focus is on the first team presentation. The participants are attentive to safety protocols as they wear masks during the presentation. Despite wearing masks, they manage to communicate effectively, ensuring that everyone can hear and participate in the discussion. The team is making efforts to present in an accessible and comfortable way for all attendees.
• 14:55 - 19:00: Break The chapter titled 'Break' involves a brief discussion or interruption where someone confirms that something looks good, and there's a request to turn off the microphone.
• 19:01 - 33:53: Second Team Presentation In the chapter titled 'Second Team Presentation,' the presentation is focused on how the ABS (presumably a product or concept developed by the team) is performing. The team highlights that the ABS is progressing well and 'going to the top.' There is a focus on showcasing certain aspects visually, as suggested by instructions to show something to the camera. The chapter captures a moment of broadcasting or demonstrating their work, emphasizing transparency and progress to the audience.
• 33:54 - 35:00: Question and Answer Session In the chapter titled 'Question and Answer Session', the discussion revolves around a successful experiment where ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) was separated from a regular mixture. The narrator expresses amazement at the separation technique. When asked about the mechanism used for separation, it was explained that motors were used on the side to create vibrations, facilitating the separation process.

Nov 4 PDR of Removing Ice from Lunar Regolith Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 record okay we can we can go guys P County Technical Institute in New Jersey this morning and we're doing the ice from regali Project y so I mean we could just start off by showing you the progress we made so far by doing you guys a test but introduce yourselves all right sorry um I'm Ayah my name is Shaz Khan my name is Gavin y and I'm Colin Smith
• 00:30 - 01:00 [Music] awesome and thank you for wearing those masks yep Safety First can you can can you hear them through this yep okay we're seem to be all right yeah see I can only move it so yeah we're trying to bring this as easy as we can to you that works
• 01:00 - 01:30 okay yep that looks good blo could you turn off your mic yep
• 01:30 - 02:00 easily but all of our ABS is going to the top and coming out you guys coming out of this gr uh okay let's stop let's explain now what's going on show them you can show them this one show it to the camera
• 02:00 - 02:30 you guys see that we got mostly our ABS um pit separated from the regular mixture that's that's amazing now and I could not tell what your mechanism was for separation what did you do there so um we have Motors on the side we have Motors on the side which make it vibrate so any of the ABS or um
• 02:30 - 03:00 ice would flow to the top and then since it's um near the surface we would go through this tube right here since it's uh at the top and if you keep the level consistent then any ice on the top would just fall out so basically what we have is that there's a funnel at the bottom and that funnel would supposedly push out all the cement and since because of the vibration the the ice is supposed to go on the top since it goes on the top it goes out there and this is where we in put all the this allows us to
• 03:00 - 03:30 continuously fill it up with reguli without having to stop because since both the reguli and the ice control at the same time just keep going on stop so so you're trickling in regolith and and ice and if you can keep that fairly consistent then you will get a consistent pouring out of ice is that correct yes the only issue we're finding is if we end up accidentally pouring too much pouring like um like above like a
• 03:30 - 04:00 we we marked off a line around here if we end up filling over that line then some of the regulate starts to mix in with the ice but if we keep it fairly around that level we find that we only get ice that is terrific okay now that's really exciting um I couldn't quite tell how big of pieces of of ABS that you're using what kind of size sizes are you looking at
• 04:00 - 04:30 there I think it's around like 3 millimeters okay so is this filament that you had cutting up cut up or or how did you where did you get the ABS from we actually um we found ABS sold in pelet form and we bought it with that so we don't have to cut up anything it's like yeah okay and that that's perfectly fine um so what do you think you want to do next so first off like the issue we have
• 04:30 - 05:00 during our first test was that the legs were a bit unstable so and it it kind of required people to hold on to it so we're g to that's like one of our first steps we're going to fix we ended up attaching like a few extra sticks to keep it stable for the test that we did now but we're going to fix that and we're going to also try to add it add like a hinge to make it foldable so you could like have a compact shitment and another thing is for the right now for the bottom funnel we're controlling it with our finger or like duct tape to but we're thinking of replacing it with some
• 05:00 - 05:30 sort of valve so that way we could control the amount of regulate that comes out what we were trying to figure out is if we can use some sort of sensor to um detect the level of um regul that's in the like inside the main part of the the container that way it could adjust the valve and release as much regulat based on what we need so it keeps meeting that level that's I like that idea I I think you should um look for a butterfly
• 05:30 - 06:00 Val yep that exactly sounds like you're very smart I like what you're doing tell me about your uh your Motors looks like you've got two of them on either side is that correct yes so um how did you arrange that so we have two Motors on either side and they have uh Centric plates on them which make it like vibrate and so they work better in like cold environments rather than like brush motors and we can control the speed over there uh
• 06:00 - 06:30 so they can like can control how they vibrate in the frequencies so if like we want it to go towards One Direction we can turn up one motor and lower the other and make it oh so so by having two Motors you can change that vibration even more can't you and we could adjust which where the vibration is located based on that we have two potentiometers set up to each motor so that way we could adjust either so we can move the I in a certain
• 06:30 - 07:00 direction so if it's like leaning towards the wrong side we get it more centered we have control switches for much these are the stupid kids in my [Laughter] class okay I'm really excited I you've got something very exciting there team um can um can you show me one of your Motors because I I'm I'm interested in how you did your setup get closer yeah a little bit closer is all can you turn one on
• 07:00 - 07:30 yeah uhhuh okay it it's funny it's funny because I can't hear it I'm not sure it's it's in a Range that your microphone doesn't pick it up it's okay it's actually pretty loud yeah it's pretty loud that must be why okay now tell me about the hopper that you've made there that's an interesting shaped Hopper that you've built so um to keep it at the right
• 07:30 - 08:00 level um we can like release it at different times to make sure that it's at the level so it doesn't go over and no some makes it into the Container but our problem is we don't know how to make like control the valve and keep it at that level and detect when to turn on or open or close valve okay I I um I think that you guys are on a good path um something that might make it easy is to look on the
• 08:00 - 08:30 internet for um I I think you could probably do a search for something like a food um a food Hopper um and uh I'm just trying to get you some words that might show you what already exists um and it might give you some ideas as to what to work with but I I I like what you've done I think it's very smart the way you've put it together um and I like how you've put together your own Motors and vibrators I
• 08:30 - 09:00 think that that's terrific the fact that you are getting some ice or some uh some ABS uh to fall out all on its own is terrific um and I think you you've got a great path there excellent job team we also want to show you uh we did do a full-fledge test with a large substance and we want to show you the results of that so bring it up a little bit
• 09:00 - 09:30 tilt camera you can see that's mainly the ABS that we got in there the issue we're finding is like the they said to use in the mixture to use like different Rock size like like different Pebbles and like gravel those also come up with the ice like we don't have any issue with regular like cement coming up with ice but we have rocks that come up too that's why do you think that is density of those bigger rocks that's why it's very similar density of your
• 09:30 - 10:00 rocks are the same as the density of the dirt yeah but still the Rocks come to the top do you have any idea why the um is too compact so it doesn't like go down as easily no that's a good guess and so just so you know this was a a this was a physics problem for a very long time and it was only solved in like about 20 years ago okay so um and you can look it up it's in reference to how
• 10:00 - 10:30 when you have um when you have rocks in the dirt as the as the um soil um if there's any kind of vibrations or anything like that the the smaller particles get underneath and lift up the Rock and so you're just doing it in a much faster fashion it used to be um like pretend like 1800s people thought that rocks grew in in the soil and that
• 10:30 - 11:00 they would rise up and the reason was uh they you know they they would see that year after year rocks would lift up in their in their uh fields and they'd have to every year they had to pick up rocks but what's happening is as as the uh soil shifts a little bit smaller particles get underneath the Rocks even though they're the same density and they lift those rocks up now you can look that up and and understand that a little
• 11:00 - 11:30 bit better and it'll make a huge difference when you're talking to other Engineers about why you're getting rocks in there so how do you think you would separate out rocks from the ice the idea that we had is that in the container where all the regulars would go out we were thinking of putting like a mesh on there and that mesh would be sort of big enough to catch those big pebbles that's what we're thinking and I think you're correct um and the smaller are I particles are the more realistic
• 11:30 - 12:00 it's going to be and uh and it will I think it will mean that your um your rocks will be that much easier to separate out okay excellent job team I think you've got a terrific uh demonstration there of how this could work um any other ideas of how this might this device might be used um you mean for different other
• 12:00 - 12:30 applications is that what you're yeah are are there any applications where this might be valuable on Earth anytime you need to separate two like materials that are a different city sure in a mining A Min what do people like to mine gold diamonds like or pretty much oh diamonds there you go yeah that's
• 12:30 - 13:00 so look at the um there is a real Earth value to this as well um so for example um you know gold is about 19 grams per cubic centimeter so you can imagine how quickly you could separate it out um with this kind of vibration but it would go in the opposite direction right you'd be wanting to kick off the dirt and leave the leave the the gold behind so excellent job team
• 13:00 - 13:30 I'm very impressed we're glad you made it because we were getting worried that you wouldn't get to see it so I have a question what is the composition of percent of uh APS to your so in that mixture you're pouring in um we basically just followed whatever the slid show said like three gallons of cement with the I think it was like four cups of abs
• 13:30 - 14:00 try to follow that to okay that that's great um I'm wondering if if you changed the composition how that would change your results too because we don't know the composition you know percent of ice to regul so you might want to V vary it and see if there's any changes in in that we try doing small tests in which we would add more ABS or take out some abs and it's still pretty much had a a pretty
• 14:00 - 14:30 consistent result with taking out only ice wow so this is amazing job you did there um I'm really impressed and you did it in a very short amount of time too which is real well you got your whole class helping you right so that's that's um that was great work on on all of that um so I really like it and and I'm thinking that um on on the Moon it would be upscaled you know it would be
• 14:30 - 15:00 way bigger but I can see that operating on the South Pole separating the ice from the reg I want you to think also about materials that with withstand those extreme temperatures so that's an I don't know if you have an um a team working on that researching what materials you could make that out of and remember the material cost is insignificant to the transportation right
• 15:00 - 15:30 so make a really strong good material um but but You' you've solved the problem very beautifully I'm very proud of you and and let's see if Mike Mike Mike joined us so Mike is our our hunch mentor and and um he's the only one been in hunch longer than me which I'm very pleased he he um he jumped on because I I wasn't sure that if Glen was coming Mike do you have any
• 15:30 - 16:00 comments you didn't get to see it um you're muted Mike I was muted in two places sorry U sorry I didn't get to see it from the start but very impressive very impressive one thing I was thinking about on your valving look at commercial valving systems things like that um also look at uh water jet because water jets that actually cut metal mixed Garnet with the water stream so they have to
• 16:00 - 16:30 control that flow so I I don't know what type of valving they do but very impressive and that's that's nice that y'all found the ABS pellets and you didn't have to do all that chopping and all that I think they're used probably in plastic injection molding something like that yeah no that's I'm I'm really pleased you found those pallets I remember you said you had pellets and then you were gonna grind them and I said nah don't grind the pallets um 40 pound pounds of pellets
• 16:30 - 17:00 now Wows that's a lot of pellets and they will get everywhere Mike you you were suggesting some kind of valving that's used on the um on water jet yeah water jets actually the stream uh the high press water comes through and then you have on some hoppers on the side where the actual aggregate goes into to help in the cutting so it's on a side Hopper okay and so you're saying as the water
• 17:00 - 17:30 comes down they've got a hopper on the side and they have to have some kind of a valve between now that would be a really tiny valve but I see what you're saying that makes a lot of sense so I I don't know if it's appical but uh perhaps but I know that's one control system I'm familiar with on that yeah no that's an interesting thought I hadn't thought of that one I I was I was thinking of it kind of like um um when they're mixing different kind of
• 17:30 - 18:00 foods yes um for for recipes and things like that in a factory they might have like um uh flour sugar um you know salt or whatever and then and each of them might be in a different Hopper and and as they open those valves it would go into that one section and get mixed up is that correct that's kind of what I was thinking about yeah H okay in in my kitchen
• 18:00 - 18:30 blender um to add something it it actually has a lid and then an opening on the lid that you can add other instead of you know like a like this with the the thing coming from the side it just you just pour it in the on the top of the of the uh device but no great job guys very good presentation thank you thank
• 18:30 - 19:00 you do you have any questions for us I think there was one somebody was asking about our main issue right now we were hop thing is the detection of when to let the reg go down from the bottom and let the ice go down from the other funnel the sensor part of it that's the only part that we have little to no idea of to make sure it stays at that yeah oh you're me
• 19:00 - 19:30 you're you know but you couldn't you do like a low water like a low water sensor isn't that kind of the same thing I so actually I think you're saying it right Mary I think um you know if you look at like the um the floater um the floater valve on a toilet okay there's a a plastic ball and
• 19:30 - 20:00 it rides on top of the water and so here would be a similar and and so um when the water gets low it opens the valve and lets water in right and this would work the same way for you because that floater ball the the floater would sit on top and um when the when the quantity of dirt got low it would come down and you can open up a um a valve on the
• 20:00 - 20:30 other side and it would let in more regular and then as it came back up to the right height so it would uh it would close the valve and so we'd have is an opening and closing according to how it's draining out does that make sense yeah take a look at at um when you're at home because you don't have the same ones at school when you get home take a look at that at the the uh floater valve
• 20:30 - 21:00 that's in your in your toilet and I think that that would work just fine for you if you've ever lived on a farm that's how this is also the same way that they um that they keep the water tanks for the for the cattle that's how they keep make sure that they always have uh water in the in the tank for them is that okay yeah yeah excellent job team now it won't be exactly the same but it'll work in the same principle and you just have larger valves for opening and closing
• 21:00 - 21:30 okay excellent job team very good thank you and you can always ask us questions you know just send them to you can send them to Glenn or and copy me or copy me all send them to Glen probably all right well thank you so much thank you thank you thank you all right so actually um uh Fairport might be ready and we are 15
• 21:30 - 22:00 minutes early so we could do Fairport while um Billings career center gets set up if that's all right if you're ready Fairport you guys ready yeah I believe we're ready flow awesome that will be great okay uh hello I'm Jackson I am the team lead of the ice from reguli Project here at FHS I'm I I'm Boston and I'm
• 22:00 - 22:30 Zoe So first so firstly these are two choices for I so this is just ABS plastic shavings and this is like yogurt cup shavings like we just cut them with some wires and um the reason why these two ches work is because their density is right around the same so it's good to have an alternative and see how they work differently with the r simul
• 22:30 - 23:00 istic so we Inc maget and we were specifically talking about an electromagnet because with a normal magnet you have to manually clean it whereas with the give me one second the electromagnet once it picks it up all I have to do is turn it off and it cleans
• 23:00 - 23:30 itself which would be very beneficial do okay so this is our testing apparatus thing that we've been working on do you want to see a demonstration of it working all right um so stuff is vibrating at one of the
• 23:30 - 24:00 best frequencies a found to work and we've tested this a couple times and we've gotten pretty consistent results yeah very good and so you've got you've got an electromagnet on the bottom that's turning on and off to give you the vibrations is that right no so we're actually using a vibration gener Ator that we had on hand we're actually it's
• 24:00 - 24:30 not the best because it doesn't actually give us frequency and amplitude readings so we're trying to look for something that can actually measure that for us but yeah it's just a piston that's going up and down to vibrate the cup and and that works fine can you change that speed yes we can okay and have you found any difference in how fast you make it go in terms of it how quickly it separates things yeah um if it's going at a slower
• 24:30 - 25:00 frequency it doesn't separate at all or very fast we're still working on narrowing it on that range that's good for it but we're working on that and it'll really help to actually get numbers okay very good and right now I see that you've just got a cut um have you looked at other shapes of of uh containers yep so we actually have a lot of containers back there that we're going to test out out it took a while to get our whole apparatus thing set up to
• 25:00 - 25:30 test with those but we are going to start with those really soon excellent excellent now what about if you change materials for your container do you think that that would matter yeah it probably will we have a metal thing that we were going to hope to test soon we just haven't quite to it yet so yeah oh that sounds really good okay um now right now you've got it so it's vibrating uh from the bottom of it
• 25:30 - 26:00 do you think there's a way to may be able to vibrate from the side or from a different direction could that be helpful yeah that could be helpful it I was actually thinking of that and hoping to try it out it will take a bit of work but I think we can make it work and we'll definitely try that excellent excellent okay what do you think your next step is right now um [Music] slideshow share screen yeah yeah go ahead share
• 26:00 - 26:30 screen click on yeah you should be able to share your screen there you go so could you go to neutralization so one thing that we sadly do not have um a prototype for yet is neutralization so during our research we realized that reguli itself has an electrostatic charge which is due to the solar flare not
• 26:30 - 27:00 solar flare solar winds um impacting and causing to charge the regula this charge then leads to ice to possibly cling to the regula which makes it extremely difficult to separate wow any builtup static charge can seriously damage any Electronics when discharged which despite us trying to completely contain the regali and not allow it to access the Electronics or any moving Parts the
• 27:00 - 27:30 electric static can charge uh once charged and then discharged can jump and go through any barriers we have set up unless they are insulators very good okay our solution to that is removing the static electric charge by grounding before by by the reg ground the regul before we vibrate thank you I can't English this morning that's okay that's just fine
• 27:30 - 28:00 keep going we've had two ways of doing that so far our first original one was a pipeline which would just be a simple downwards pipe with a conductor and an insulator as seen in the drawing but uh as of recently um we thought to use what's properly known as an Archimedes screw seen in the uh rotating picture yeah Will basically a Greek invention that pulls up water and is
• 28:00 - 28:30 also now used modernly for sand cement mix and other stuff like that in formal fact factories and all that as and I think that's a really smart idea that you've got going there um part of what I like is that you know if you've got a metal Archimedes screw you would be hopefully grounding all of that um directly down so that makes sense that
• 28:30 - 29:00 is the intended plan and it would also be able to even if there was some sort of issue where the static electricity could leave the ared screw the grounding point would be from the base of the Archimedes screw meaning all electrostatic charge will eventually go back to set aredes screw one thing that we want to implement to the ared screw to maximize um contact between the regul and the
• 29:00 - 29:30 metal is having small little spikes or Pikes coming up from the rotating base to kind of embed themselves into the regul to remove more electrostatic charge that just no spikes I think that's a smart idea as well um and and um okay now one thing that we've got going for us here is that once your Rover starts driving around on the lunar
• 29:30 - 30:00 surface it's going to have essentially the same charge as the rest of the dirt does that make sense yes and so even though there may be a static charge on everything because it's on everything um it may not be a big effect okay but I like I like your ideas of how to be able to make sure that we've got the same conduct or the uh the same charge over everything
• 30:00 - 30:30 um now one of the difficulties that we're going to that there's no way for us to test with right now is how does that stuff change at the very low temperatures yes as we're approaching you know zero Kelvin and we're not going to get there obviously but a as we get closer to it there are some atoms and some some uh materials that are going to become uh less conductive or in some
• 30:30 - 31:00 cases a little bit more conductive so I I I think it's very smart that you're thinking about this excellent job team one thing that we also liked about the aredes screw is that since it is used to transform materials upwards we can have some sort of uh system that basically becomes the input from outside of the Rover or robot into the r and into the sorted system I I think
• 31:00 - 31:30 you're exactly right so um part of what's happening is from uh from the last class and your class it starts M it starts me to thinking about what is the next step once you get separate once you see how you want to separate your regali from your plastic um it gives us the opportunity to start figuring out how do we want to scoop up the dirt and put it into your Hopper or whatever it is so
• 31:30 - 32:00 you guys are going right along the correct path and and um it makes a lot of sense the way you're saying this excellent job team so vibration okay so one more couple quick things with the vibration so as we mentioned with the other things we were hoping to do we were also hoping to test with I know we mentioned different shapes of
• 32:00 - 32:30 containers but I wanted to try testing with like an upside down cone just to see if we could separate them in different ways to get maybe the ice to go to the top or the bottom so that's one cool thing but I also just wanted to ask do you have any ideas of anything we could use to measure the amplitude or frequency I'm kind of stuck on what we could use
• 32:30 - 33:00 when you're muted Mike do you have any thoughts on that mik you're muted too okay I'll unmute um I'm not certain I'm not sure if an RPM meter would be able to use it I know they're digital meters like that um I know also in the early light shows they actually used two
• 33:00 - 33:30 mirrors basically to create all the patterns and everything and they would just vary with potentiometers they'd vary the input to the motors and they'd have mirrors mounted to it and the beams would go through that it create all the little sine waves and everything like that so that would be one way to create maybe vibrations in two different directions but voltage would be the only way I'd know that you see what you were doing okay I I've got a thought um I've
• 33:30 - 34:00 got two different thoughts one go to your go to your physics teacher and see if they have a um a calibrated um stroboscope okay something that that flashes on and off right another thing that you might check out is go to your music room and see if they might be able to help you with something da you got any thoughts for us not right off the bat I'm I'm
• 34:00 - 34:30 thinking about it so um I think I think [Music] um if you've got a stroboscope that would be a really easy way to get to get some of it but you know it might even be easier if you've got something from the music room I'm I'm certain that you're that they would have something for measuring pitch yeah um I definitely look into all those things thank you so I I I just got
• 34:30 - 35:00 on here a second ago how are you generating these what's your Source oh yeah go back and show that again team that was really cool so this is that we have right now we have a vibration generator thing that we already had in our physics department that we were using and we're using it to vibrate this platform which is then vibrating this cup and all the material is inside there oh that's cool yeah so this is it
• 35:00 - 35:30 running I don't know how well you can see it but it's vibrating all material around and everything's starting to separate so have to let it run for a bit that so is is there not something on that machine that gives you Hertz so it gives us the output current and the output voltage but there's dials on the actual um vibration generator for frequency and
• 35:30 - 36:00 amplitude that we can't get readings from it's just kind of a higher low okay it's one of our reject devices from physics that we bought but never used because it doesn't tell us the Hertz um but it does give them the voltage and the current I like the strobe idea and I do have a strobe yeah with can you could you try to contact the company that manufactured that I mean even though there's not a
• 36:00 - 36:30 readout on there they they it has to somehow be calibrated yeah that's a very if you send an email to the company they may be able to to give you some suggestion on that all right thank you and the music idea is really good because um you you can actually tune your instrument to the right frequencies
• 36:30 - 37:00 and it's an app on the phone even you don't even have to buy anything anymore so um and you know like every every I play the violin so every string has a different frequency and you can and the app will tell you what what frequency you are on if if it's an a it's a certain frequency if it's an e it's a certain frequency and the other thing that I thought that came to mind was
• 37:00 - 37:30 when you might be in a400 degrees um when you get that cold electrons kind of like freeze and um it's a interesting phenomena called Quantum pinning that you might be interested in and looking up a little bit about because you are at a really cold temperature at400 de and you would probably have some Quantum
• 37:30 - 38:00 pinning at that temperature okay yeah we'll look into that yeah it's really an awesome thing YouTube it and you can see all kinds of amazing dis experiments done with the quantum pinning yeah sounds cool it is really cool okay any questions team or have you finished your slid show we had one more thing to add it was just
• 38:00 - 38:30 about the magnet design and just a concept so we had two like thoughts for one was almost like a slider where it was the magnet was actually placed at a 45 Dee angle from where the Rus and Ice were being vibrated to pull the rolith up off the ice once it was separated but then another thought we had was to put the magnet in the bottom of the like container to then hold the reg to the actual container after and then like move the ice from it so that they were
• 38:30 - 39:00 separated yeah because that would be our phase two separation after the vibration like places the rig on the bottom and the problem with like positioning the slider magnet on the top is that the rigth would pass through the ice it might get entangled with it again so that's why we kind of said probably to the bottom plus we were thinking about using a because like I said before it cleans itself so wor about that but we were wondering what would be a we
• 39:00 - 39:30 still have to do some research on it but like what would be a good design for that or what would be a good direction to go with that I I'm a little lost on that Mike you got any thoughts no I'm not sure that's a good question though
• 39:30 - 40:00 um do me a favor um write that up a little bit for me and um it it'll make me think about it a little bit more just write it up as a question and explain your situation a little bit better and going through that uh might help me out a little bit does that make sense yeah
• 40:00 - 40:30 okay any other thoughts one thing that we hope to improve on is that our uh proposed system at the moment is a batch based system which is less efficient and we would prefer to eventually figure out a way to make it a continuous system like the previous group had where we can constantly have an input of mixture and
• 40:30 - 41:00 then as also have a constant output of ice and regula and I think you can um and I think that part of part of the difficulty is coming up with the shape that allows for that kind of Separation um and so part of it is the shape of your of your um of your Hopper and also where you have the vibrations uh attached to are you
• 41:00 - 41:30 vibrating the walls more you VI vibrating the floor better and also um you know so you can imagine if I have pretend that um if I've got one hopper and it only takes the top part off and then I have like a a trough so this one vibrates and then the The Ice comes off to the side how does that um what do you call it how does the um the
• 41:30 - 42:00 trough on the side that's taking it out that might also be helpful in terms of how does it how does it move to separate it out does that make sense yeah but I I I think you guys are on a really good path um I look forward to seeing how you guys are going to um uh once you've separated it now how do you part it off to the other side and I think it's just a matter of where do you place the holes uh or or the the relief area for it to
• 42:00 - 42:30 go as well as how do you get rid of the the regolith and and you have to be able to move both of them back off and it's something you'll just have to kind of play with but you know if you go back again to um to food preparation or something like that it might give you some ideas there um in terms of like the mechanical the mechanics of how a um how they do the mixing in in big
• 42:30 - 43:00 industrial kitchens would make a big difference in terms of how how it works for you guys as well think of it like as a factory um as opposed to a home kitchen because that won't work at all the same okay okay excellent job team keep this up thank you okay I'm GNA move into another room here sorry okay nice job I love the demonstration and good work in using
• 43:00 - 43:30 things you could find around the room that is really cool so you can always ask questions just copy your wonderful teacher okay oh thank you so much and look up Quantum Quantum pinning yeah I definitely will it sounds really cool yeah and I like your shirt on that flow that was really smart yeah okay so we're gonna move on now to Billings Career Center thank you
• 43:30 - 44:00 Fairport high school bye bye have a great week have a great week you too thank you Glenn Mike Flo yep you bet um Flo can you hear us I I certainly can we're having some technical difficulties this morning my my main uh lecture computer isn't displaying anymore and all of our microphone and our video and everything went through that our text in here right now we're trying to hook the microphone up a
• 44:00 - 44:30 different way I need like two minutes if that's okay to yeah yeah take your time Flo and I'm gonna have to jump off I apologize okay well thank you so much for jumping on Mike I really you're my go to person no it was wonderful thank you very much well thank you bye bye have a great week Mike you too
• 44:30 - 45:00 byebye and I did see Stacy on for a while just so Glenn are you able to join me this week or because I have yeah I should be here for a lot of them okay good because I have um I have every day but my biggest day is Friday because everyone who couldn't
• 45:00 - 45:30 fit in during the week um is fit in on Friday and that's because some schools meet every other week and so if they couldn't meet the first week then their projects were already used gone and so they came on Friday in particular Tri County they didn't meet last week so they meet this week but their projects are already were from last week
• 45:30 - 46:00 well and she I believe she's already started her mission right oh yeah she's there until January that will be so interesting December I thought she was done in December yeah I don't think she's coming back to school until January though and I think that's right that's good so um and thank you for um hosting they get back to the uh the MSU
• 46:00 - 46:30 students remind me what that is the Montana State um space Consortium is coming to Johnson Space yeah I haven't I didn't see a message yet on so the the regular um director is um on a I think a sabatical so this lady and I know the regular one but this lady is different um she's she's coming in to take um the
• 46:30 - 47:00 place of the regular director good okay all right well we see you now we can't hear you now can you hear us I hear youell awesome you guys are up I guess you're ready we're I think we're good to go we kind of got I think we're set so we're going to roll with this so okay go for
• 47:00 - 47:30 it okay H hello my name's Vinnie Burke and this is Daniel okay and we chose the ice from reg project um yeah so you want pull that okay PowerPoint all right um I just need to share screen I didn't get to practice this all beforehand and get it set [Music] up can you see our screen now yep perfect all right so our uh Team we
• 47:30 - 48:00 named ice baby sorry ice baby because we chose the Ice regli Project um once we chose this project we started writing everything down in our engineering Journal defining the problem uh questions that we asked Flo and um yeah um then we also wrote down our
• 48:00 - 48:30 brainstorming and everything we've done up to this point uh including our prototypes and all of that uh and then uh also documented in our Journal was our brainstorming and so after we defined our problem we went into brainstorming Solutions but uh due to uh some uh small amount of time we had we had to generate Concepts while we were brainstorming and so uh the
• 48:30 - 49:00 brainstorm is shown to the right on this PowerPoint and uh we had a few ideas other than vibration but we didn't end up pursuing them like electrolysis and centrifugation and static electricity uh to collect the ice and then uh yeah all right our first problems um were designing a pipe that we could uh kind of tile out using multiple different pipes depending on how long we needed them uh we ended up eventually
• 49:00 - 49:30 using a 4 in Long pipe uh three in wide and 2 inch tall um we made it so they fit together using kind of sort of fitment um we use 20% infill because we plan on being able to drill through them to let out some of the
• 49:30 - 50:00 regli and here are those parts right here uh which on the left we have the pipe that'll just fit into the uh pipe with the supports and so we have two the supports and then that will be connected to whatever our vibration technique is which will then be a connect to some kind of Base so the vibration technique that we used was using an unbalanced motor we used our teachers brass tumbler to
• 50:00 - 50:30 create the vibration and then we attached our pipe to the top of it to get that vibration up to then our mixture that would sift out I guess the ice separate from the regli and gravel uh we're hoping in the future that we will use a hobby motor because um The Hobby motor would be a variable speed on balance motor that and whereas the this brass tumbler is not uh and one of the main problems by
• 50:30 - 51:00 using this brass tumbler was to mount our design on top of it but we'll get to that in a second um we created our iced mixture at first we started cutting 1 to 2 mm cuts of ABS plastic and after cutting for eight hours with two people cutting we we had about a cup and we needed four cups to create our desired
• 51:00 - 51:30 mixture and so then after that we decided it would take too long to try to get all of that so we started looking for other materials that would have a similar density and be more accessible so we ended up using a kind of corn that has a very similar density and we had four cups of
• 51:30 - 52:00 hey you guys are very smart good job is that like a corn meal it's a uh corn brass Tumblr media and so it was actually in our brass tumbler when we got it and we when we measured it out it ended up being almost the same density very good the the closer to the density of ice the better you're going to be okay excellent job team uh and so here's our first
• 52:00 - 52:30 prototype uh we created this in Autodesk Inventor and then uh we also created the lid so we can show it but the basic idea is to pour the uh the mixture at the back and it'll be on a slight tilt downward and as it goes down our uh regt will drop out the bottom and back and leaving at the end of the pipe uh just ice falling out or at least mostly ice uh the back sifter which will be used to
• 52:30 - 53:00 uh sort out some of the bigger particles wasn't uh didn't print right and we don't have bigger particles currently in our mixture so we didn't put it in our test and this is our first assembled prototype it is the pipe um that's attached to our brass tumbler and we don't plan on this being our final project piece but we do it did work for our first use you guys ready for the video
• 53:00 - 53:30 do you have any video of that i' I'd love to see uh yeah sure you do you want to skip to the video now yeah and yeah let me see that [Music]
• 53:30 - 54:00 [Music] sh so that's that's all corn that's coming
• 54:00 - 54:30 out there or plastic uh yeah well that's that's our corn media I I'm just gon to add it so the corn media that they had is what's designed to Tumble brass to to shine the brass and it's the same exact size as that ABS they were cutting up right there and the density matches up but they'll try it with abs they just didn't want to use up their their mixture that took so long cut on this first so my my I do not have a
• 54:30 - 55:00 preference for what what the material is as long as it matches the the density that you're looking for so I think you guys are doing a terrific job I like that you switch to something different that was easier and worked better for you good job team so when you had that running was that was that trough um horizontal or is it angled at all want me to go back to the video oh
• 55:00 - 55:30 the half pipe on top yeah uh so the it's not angled at all because when we were printing it we couldn't get it to do an accurate angle downwards so we're hoping to put a little uh measuring block on the bottom of the brass tumbler that way we can down or angle the entire system downward it wasn't down I think it was it had a 1 mm lift or something it was a very small lift in the back but that's
• 55:30 - 56:00 actually probably pretty good I mean when you think about it because you're getting that lighter stuff rising to the top and if it actually has to you know go up you know even less than a 1% slope that's going to help to keep that that uh concrete mix from migrating out as well that's that's actually really cool guys I'm looks really good I'm impressed now what happens if there's gravel
• 56:00 - 56:30 inside along with that uh we haven't tested that yet but we're hoping that uh we have this we have a piece here you got to bring it up here to show your little we have a piece here that we're going to fit almost like a sifter into so that the larger pieces of gravel will then be stopped and then pushed out the back and then leaving just the cement and ice okay and how do you think you're going to separate out the cement from the from
• 56:30 - 57:00 the ice so our our current plan is that on our halfpipe uh the cement seem to gather in the back of the system and so we're going to have a drop out the back and so that right when you pour it in it'll vibrate and hopefully the cement will be at the bottom and then it'll drop the cement out the back and then as it goes down the pipe we're hoping to have more smaller holes because it seemed like in our test that the cement seemed to stick to the right wall wall and the ice seem to stick to the left wall which was very that's interesting
• 57:00 - 57:30 and so we want to explore and see if we can use that to our advantage okay what why do you think one has a preference for one side or the other I think I think it could be just because of the way that it 3D printed I think that one side could be slightly more angled and so that heavier uh cement goes to that one side and then all of the Corn raises and goes to the upper
• 57:30 - 58:00 left that's interesting I you you might also look at just how it um if you take your structure and shift it to the left or shift it to the right on your um uh on your vibration tool that may also give you some kind of a preferential there as well because you might get one side that's kind of wagging a little bit hard than the opposite side and it might just be how how it's placed on there does
• 58:00 - 58:30 that make sense yeah okay okay very smart team I I love what you're doing what do you think your next step is right now um I think currently our next step is to uh work on dropping the actual regul out and then collecting it and then hopefully if uh making a system where we can collect the regulate and then rerun it through the system that way we can collect any ice that may have fallen out as well okay I I'm impressed keep this up team very
• 58:30 - 59:00 good AG that's really cool guys and any other thoughts I like that that your whole design and that you're using a tumbler and actually I know Mr Wagner in the machine shop has a really good tumbler because he made parts for us and he was using a tumbler all the time um so you could always go down there and
• 59:00 - 59:30 look at his Tumblr okay it's big it's not little no do you have any questions for us do you have any questions here uh I don't um no
• 59:30 - 60:00 okay and good job any other comment Dave well I I'm I'm still intrigued by this the notion that you're getting a separation between your your cement and and your um corn uh one side to the other and you might be on to something it might have it might be just some little anomaly in your print but you could probably test that I
• 60:00 - 60:30 mean you could you could probably create some some very thin little shims or something that you could just lay you know you'd have to tape them down or something um maybe even a couple of just layers of duct tape or something like that that you could shape and slope accordingly and see in fact that increases or has any effect on on this
• 60:30 - 61:00 this stuff separating because that would be very beneficial if if you can if you can induce this to work that way and then change the design of your trough a little bit accordingly you you you could that that could be a great asset so it would be worth playing around with a little bit right yeah I I really like you know it happened by accident maybe that it
• 61:00 - 61:30 wasn't level but take a level take a level and see if it isn't level you know if you have a little one that will fit in there and see if it isn't level and that might be you know it's just a physical attribute of the pipe but it could be a very important physical attribute of that pipe um just because David mentioned it you know imagine if you take I I think you've got four legs on that thing if you put um some screws at the bottom of
• 61:30 - 62:00 your legs oh yeah and you could adjust it to to get different Heights or something like that as well and that would give it very that would make it very um tunable if you find that that's part of the deal so very smart te I like that's a good way to describe it yeah you you may be able to fine-tune this thing um with very small adjustments yeah you can even put a
• 62:00 - 62:30 little piece of cardboard under it to see if it makes a big difference you know you got it already printed see if that slope makes a difference in in the ice going to one side because that was a very important observation you make Keen observation and thank you for making that video because that really did show a great separation all right all right well you can always
• 62:30 - 63:00 ask questions you know that so thank you so much all right so the next team is Jackson hle and they're they're 15 minutes away thanks guys thank you so much have a great week you too great job and the sound worked perfectly in the picture too I'm gonna take a break for a minute here I'll be right back you got 15 minutes
• 63:00 - 63:30 before Jackson Hole comes okay thank you Glen you gonna keep this active flow yeah yeah I'm Gonna Keep It active I'm gonna do the same thing yeah me too we only have Jackson ho and glennell
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• 77:00 - 77:30 you could I'd say just start it now and
• 77:30 - 78:00 then you could just go in there for the
• 78:00 - 78:30 last few minutes or something or you can
• 78:30 - 79:00 go into the study room at the library that would be my other uh suggestion uh we could go over to the library yeah let's go do that I know they expecting you guys in two minutes so try uh yeah that's all right go go to the library or wherever you want to
• 79:00 - 79:30 go I wonder if Holden's actually gonna show up be surprised people in all the parts though you don't think Holden's gonna
• 79:30 - 80:00 come hello hello hello so do you have snow yet yeah yes well that's good you need the precipitation [Music]
• 80:00 - 80:30 yeah are you in the library now yeah we're just over in pods in the library yeah good it was better when the class had the bigger room yeah you had two rooms and you'd go into the second room all the time yeah
• 80:30 - 81:00 [Music] um hi this is a Jackson hallc high school they already have snow you would like it there Glenn I would like it it's the most beautiful place in the world I think it is very pretty it is really beautiful it was too bad what happened to the bear 399 yeah what a shame there were a
• 81:00 - 81:30 couple people who considered um it was teachers actually considered going as one as a bear and other one as a [Music] car yeah yeah one of the one of our most famous bears in the area got killed by a car oh I'm sorry to hear that yeah it's the Grand tons but he the bear was actually outside the tons a little 27 year old yeah she she'd been around
• 81:30 - 82:00 quite a while yeah yeah they're out they're out plowing my driveway right now oh my goodness you got snow too of course we're a lot we're a lot higher than Jackson Hole is sorry to say guys I didn't realize that it's cold here but it's and no
• 82:00 - 82:30 precipitation so we're ready when you are yep they had to move to the library um they only have a small classroom now they used to have two rooms but their other room got taken over I think by Spanish teacher yes that's [Music]
• 82:30 - 83:00 correct and then after that we got um Glenn Allen we're done for today right you should be able to share your screen y if you want to that's up to you look share on the screen is a bit important why is it errors oh my God that's a interesting
• 83:00 - 83:30 why uh oh why do you need I no sorry it wants permissions oh that's so frustrating wait we need to qu and um we might need to quit and rejoin sorry um let's try not doing that hey it works
• 83:30 - 84:00 it works oh good all right oh yes we got it right so um just I bet forgot you changed the acronym yes we just we just changed the acronym we needed like five minutes I looked over at the poster good enough um uh so put it on slideshow can you yes
• 84:00 - 84:30 that is smart I am there you go so unused to zoom it's been so long yeah all right so our team is team huny high school students United with NASA to separate ice I'm great Duncan this isard and Holden Leos is not here right now we are from Jacksonville High School and we are under um Keen Anderson as our
• 84:30 - 85:00 teacher why just um so our project was to se was the um separating ice from lunar regolith project um devel we're aiming to get an effective solution for it and uh you you know uh harvesting ice is a essential thing that we are going to need if we're planning to like establish more permanent things on the moon because we can get both water and also fuel through hydrogen and oxygen um
• 85:00 - 85:30 electrolysis and the goal is to increase concentration by like 10 to 20% at least yeah and some of the designed criteria cones are the cable system we need to make it efficient um also they must um withstand extreme temperatures I believe it goes up to negative it is plus or minus 250 yeah but down in the craters down in the
• 85:30 - 86:00 craters yeah it is negative 400 I believe yeah something like that um effective heat management it shouldn't get too hot because if it doesn't it won't work the ice would melt and Tech it would sulate technically yeah it would just pass liid State uh we need to adapt to lunar gravity that's something we can yeah something we didn't initially think about but we need to um because due to lower gravity um many
• 86:00 - 86:30 saring solutions might be different but we can't really test for that much yeah and then the particles are actually really similar so vibration is the best the best method that we could use and then the sample collections we could either have a batch process or a ongoing process that continu yeah a continuous process that just keeps and we need to avoid air based methods I don't we could use any but yeah it wouldn't really work
• 86:30 - 87:00 there isn't enough atmosphere to use like airbase and also we we tried to look for fluids but we couldn't find any um uh uh oh why do we want to actually go through and look is yes probably yeah probably that's El a yeah this is
• 87:00 - 87:30 just our initial statement um so team huny high school students United with NASA to separate ice is working to solve the ice from reg with problem presented by NASA team will will be working throughout the year to develop Solutions using a mix of materials provided by NASA and our own external research um Fe materials on the moon is a concern for possible emissions due to the cost
• 87:30 - 88:00 associated with um launching large payloads um the ability to harvest ice from Moon reduce the need to send water and could allow for Onsite fuel production uh the hey guys do do you guys have a prototype that you for us to see any kind of testing you've done do not currently have a physical prototype we are focusing more so on trying to get a viable source of vibrations for our
• 88:00 - 88:30 testing uh we are currently working on that we've been trying to adapt speakers into a um reliable source of vibration uh the only problem we've been running into is our um frequency driver does not provide much power and we currently have an amp on order to helping to try and fix that problem yeah we don't have enough yeah um we have a 15inch cone from a sub
• 88:30 - 89:00 that we've been trying to run but it just requires too much power so we can get the frequency out of it but we can't really get much volume which is what we want and um that's what we've been trying to fix okay H have you have you um set up anything so that you can see if what you've got does what you need do something um I mean do you have a do you have like a bowl that you can put dirt
• 89:00 - 89:30 and plastic in and see how it how it behaves with the vibration that you get off your woofer yes we have tried to do that but the issue was we weren't getting enough vibration for it to actually move around the um uh the um subst the substitute we actually have from a prior project we have some lunar um regi simulant that was left over from a previous punch
• 89:30 - 90:00 project okay right region and everything um okay but it was we poured some in and it didn't move we didn't have enough vibrations to get it to okay well and a and a 15inch subwoof or subwoofer is interesting but it's not necessary to have one that big it might be that if you just got a smaller one you You' could power it easier we do have other speakers that we've tried as well and the issue is
• 90:00 - 90:30 still we have not gotten enough throw out of them okay we're working on getting in right now yeah we have it on order yeah to get the the throw kind of to get actual substance okay and what about what kind of bowl are you using or container for your regolith and plastic So currently we um just tried it in the 15-inch subwoofer and we just put the
• 90:30 - 91:00 reg directly into the cone itself um but eventually we are planning to effectively just get a like an aluminum roasting pan and use that as our um basic and I and I think that that's a good beginning as well um now the shape of it can also be important whether you make it like the shape of a hopper so that it's kind of conical at and you know all of the some stuff it go at the
• 91:00 - 91:30 bottom do do you have some thoughts on that um yeah different shapes could be very useful um like if we had conical where you'd have your um heavy at the bottom and you have a thin layer of um your eyes at the top likely uh probably also a cylinder where you could have less surface area you could have actual um for the columns that you could have a
• 91:30 - 92:00 thicker layer of concentrated um material that would be easier to skim off uh the concentrate as opposed to a thinner layer where you'd have to be very delicate with your um collection sure okay all right now this is uh this is one link you had what what else did you have there for us some of the research we did on prototypes and yes just go oh yeah let's see what kind of thoughts you you had for this so we
• 92:00 - 92:30 have a couple different oh God it's still in it remove it go and remove it oh which one which one do you think you know exactly which one sorry there's one in here that we put in like as half a joke yeah sorry we're high schoolers we're not incredibly we're not the best at being professional at all times so we have a couple Solutions um it's not and describe what you got at the bottom there what is that this here at the bottom yeah this is a um diagram from a
• 92:30 - 93:00 patent um for separating it's a system for extracting water from lunar regali it is a patent for exactly what we're looking for and um is it doing what is are they doing a similar process as we are yeah I believe so are they using vibration well kind of they use using a couple different so it's um the first stage in here is well actually no that's the last
• 93:00 - 93:30 stage interesting um or is it no no so they use actually multiple different situation situations they um one that is very interesting is they charge the regi mix with static electricity and then they attempt to pull the ice out with a magnet after it's been you finally showed up I'm not sure how magnetic is yeah but the the um the thing is charge it with static so that it will be
• 93:30 - 94:00 attracted um this is holding St static electricity is also not attracted to Magnetic so now um however um can you just what is a tribo charger AO charger that is something that we had to look as well that is to charge with static if oh okay okay that yes I thought it was a Mis turbo charger at first me too
• 94:00 - 94:30 okay so who did this um pattern do you know who whose pattern is this meder Philip Meer yeah so and oh yeah philli you know him Dave oh there it is Phil misker did you look him up yeah we looked at up we were doing some research on what we could do trying to find inspiration and we came across this and we were wondering so we
• 94:30 - 95:00 did some research when some research on it and we found out that the tribo charger was basically charging it with static yes yeah okay I I would be I'm skeptical of what this what this person has uh patented seems like they spent a lot more money on it than what it's worth is my opinion yeah yes okay what else you got where that looks about right all
• 95:00 - 95:30 right uh that one that one was also you Ricardo I believe oh that one yes that one's basically um putting water on it I I don't think SC down a little bit yeah it was something scroll down a little bit it was something we found out it is not specifically to separate um the reguli from the ice but other stuff and we were wondering if it could work so we did some research on it and we would need to isolate the water so um the ice would
• 95:30 - 96:00 rice up and the regular was uh fall down uh we're not pretty sure that would work very well uh we actually had constraints yeah I think it's too much energy yeah yeah and also trying to find a liquid that can be that can stay liquid at those temperatures while also being lighter than Ice is very hard we do well helium would work but that would be really expensive and difficult uh
• 96:00 - 96:30 separating it with helium yeah interesting um I believe this patent I believe this mechanism relies on having a liquid that is in between the densities of the two things you are wanting to separate so we would need to have a liquid with a density around one so we need a liquid about the density of water because the ice is a density of9 G per um cim cub and the reg is about 1.1 or
• 96:30 - 97:00 1.2 so we need some liquid in that range and I believe there are a couple [Music] that I don't I okay so instead of continuing on about things that we're not that we're not going to do let's go back to what you guys can do so um do you guys have like a like
• 97:00 - 97:30 you know those sanders um like a handheld sander that you plug it in and it has some vibration to it have you tried have you tried using that as your vibration mechanism we haven't we didn't even um think about that we were thinking um we were trying to focus more so on sources of vibration for through linear Mo movement not rotational necessarily we have a couple more ideas in this
• 97:30 - 98:00 um yeah what's this yeah um this is just a um patent for separating grains I believe that um wood chiping yeah this one I believe is not necessarily very viable I believe that one is in on optical yes okay well yeah this is all
• 98:00 - 98:30 interesting research but um I think that they're going for things that are not necessarily a good idea yeah this is this all strikes me as being very esoteric in nature what what right now is your primary um method of separation currently we are going towards a um method where we use a
• 98:30 - 99:00 speaker style vibrator to um vibrate a pan essentially should we if you would like to go and grab the speak I'm down let me give another suggestion I think speakers are a great great way to go but if you're having difficulty with that you might just try some do you guys have like Vex Motors or any kind of Motors that you've got on
• 99:00 - 99:30 campus that are are available yes and and so if I take just a Vex motor and so I've got the um the axle coming off if you just put something on the end that is off um off center it's going to you're going to get vibrations and if you can control the speed of your motor when it's spinning like that increase or to decrease you're going to get plenty of vibration yep so it doesn't have to be something
• 99:30 - 100:00 complicated and you don't you shouldn't have to order a bunch of things I I think that you can get some decent vibrations just out of something that rotates and and is off centered uh offc Center balanced so that it's uh it you'll get plenty of vibration off of it does that make sense uh yes um and and and if you've got some of these different Motors I think you probably got some really good motor controllers
• 100:00 - 100:30 available as well and so you can get a lot of different speeds off of these off of these motors is that okay yes um and then I think it'll get you started really quickly on how to I mean depending on what kind of um uh what kind of bowl or container or whatever the that you want to work with I think you can you can uh get started pretty quick on that what what kind of um have you started making your uh ice
• 100:30 - 101:00 simulant yet um ice what the your I your plastic parts what kind of plastic pieces were you going to put in your regolith we going to use we going to use ABS okay you just going to trim it off of like a filament we're going to sand it I believe right yes in the um okay in the uh prompt for this project it says we should sand it with 180 grit sandpaper I
• 101:00 - 101:30 believe okay check it again because I've redone it since then and that takes a very long time and actually we just got comments from a couple of other teams they had used like a coffee grinder or something like that so imagine if you take just like um filament from a 3D printer and then stick it into like a coffee grinder and chop it up it'll get into some really tiny pieces very quickly does that make sense yep yeah
• 101:30 - 102:00 yeah don't don't do sanding that's yeah I was wrong yeah don't do and he changed it to um what did you say instead just cutting the a yeah just cutting it but if you can get into I mean you can cut it up and get some pretty small pieces with scissors but I think you can do it even faster if you use something like a end like a coffee grinder or blender or something like that okay yeah yeah Mom
• 102:00 - 102:30 first I don't want yeah and and actually um you can buy one school bought those little um pallets already made though it sound like they had to buy 40 pounds of it so wait a minute you go over to like do you guys have a Hobby Lobby in your town no no okay um well there might be
• 102:30 - 103:00 an art supply store and they might have uh some plastic pellets uh and exactly what they might use them for I don't know but check and see what type of plastic pellets they have and they they come they're smaller than a pee they probably take four of them to make a full-sized PE and that's a very good start and it would go much quicker than what we're talking about okay so there there's some different options for you yeah yeah you might
• 103:00 - 103:30 actually go to Native American store and get Beats that are very tiny yeah in the on the material too but I guess that's a good start yeah well now somebody else measured the density of corn and they found that it was very similar yep watch the videos and you'll see see different I'll put these videos online and you'll see different suggestions on how to get that
• 103:30 - 104:00 uh uh plastic okay or not get the plastic and do different things but yeah I remember when I visited you had that big speaker already yeah set up so some downsize it would be important but keep at it guys I like the I I am surprised there were even patterns patterns for this already I didn't think other people were really
• 104:00 - 104:30 thinking about it that they would make a pattern already yeah I think I was not very impressed with at least the first one and maybe the second and third one too well this one is a Chinese I think and they did use vibration and this is another yeah and here they're using vibration also is something used in like mining to separate out tailings yeah last last minute add on okay good
• 104:30 - 105:00 research I just looked I just looked up the the density of corn and it's it's a little bit higher than you would like I think that um I think you could probably do better with something besides corn okay all right yeah but watch the videos I'll put them online all right thank you okay thank you thank you so much and you be careful driving in that snow okay yeah have a
• 105:00 - 105:30 wonderful afternoon okay good job keep it up y bye bye oh here's Nancy joined us oh hi Nancy and we got we got one more school we got glennel we're ready for you glennell all right all right bye hello team ice this is the ice team hello hello all right uh yeah bye bye bye bye
• 105:30 - 106:00 yes does that look good for you guys yeses sure does good morning we are the glennel ice team also known as the ice creater extraction team my name is Elise Cho I'm amof Ki and I'm Alex shapen and our NASA hunch project is to separate litar reg from Ice using vibration on the moon
• 106:00 - 106:30 there are these permanently shadowed regions that have temperatures ranging to almost lower as400 degrees fenhe and orbiters indicate that there's actually ice mixed with reguli in these craters so this is extremely important as it costs $1.2 million per kilogram to lift into space so if we're able to use the moon's already available resources this will be a huge time and cost saver for NASA and our Target location is the shackle con crater on the moon South Pole yeah so this leads us into a
• 106:30 - 107:00 problem statement where NASA's Artemis Mission says that they'll send four humans to the Moon in approximately one year but apart from the water they take with him they'll have no water source on the moon however as previously mentioned NASA's sopia Orbiter indicates about 400 parts per million of ice mixed with some of the lunar reg and this is found in the Shon crater which is one of those psrs that permanently shadowed regions and each Kil uh cost $1.2 million to transport with SpaceX and extracting the water in just one cubic meter can save over half a
• 107:00 - 107:30 million dollar in transport cost so according to the project outline the water will be used to create Rocket Fuel drinking water rehydrate the dehydrated meals pool equipment and more and they anticipate establishing a permanent moon base with at least eight people on it constantly in the next 10 years so in order to get a basis on how our project works and what people think about our project we did a survey of some of our peers and asso and asked them a number of questions about our project so the first question we asked them was how familiar are you with the lack of water on the moon and a lot of people responded said they were either somewhat
• 107:30 - 108:00 or very familiar with the problem so this does show that this is a problem that needs to be solved and then the other question we asked them is what did they expect the water to be used for and a lot of people thought that it would be used for drinking water cooling components or hygiene but a lot of people did not think they it'd be used for Rocka or oxygen as it can be used yeah so then we got into researching some of the patents one of them was on magnetic and another was thermal drilling we did more of them but these kind of kept showing up in lots of our research so the magnetic one exploits the magnetic properties of ice
• 108:00 - 108:30 and regali ice is diamagnetic whereas regali is paramagnetic meaning ice always repels and um regali is always attracted to a magnetic field regardless of charge and so at very low temperatures near absolute zero these magnetic properties are Amplified and with the lower gravity of the Moon they'll also be easier to exploit these magnetic prop properties thermal drilling on the other hand uses friction from a drill as it goes into the regul to almost separate the water just like that filters it and that friction
• 108:30 - 109:00 creates lots of heat that vaporizes the water and pressurizes it so it can be kind of used just as is and recycles power loss which is a big part because power is super limited over yeah and going Beyond patents we also research real world applications for these Concepts so vibration was given to us by the NASA hunch problem statement and we actually found this to be very advantageous through our research as we can control both the frequency and amplitude when testing and so using vibration this will be able to achieve the most efficient separation means when
• 109:00 - 109:30 we're testing and figure out which vibration um area that we're able to use to separate them the best and then it also uses very low power usage and it's very durable as it has fewer moving components and as alov explained before the thermal drill is actually being developed by NASA currently on the Trident One lunar drill a part of the Polar resource ice mining experiment and that set to LA in around 2025 um and so this drill is really cool as it can separate both the separate both the regli and the ice and then also condense
• 109:30 - 110:00 the ice into vapor to be used so now we took some of our patents that we had researched and discovered things about and we then rank them based on number of specifications that would make them more or less useful to NASA so we ranked them on number of specifications like power usage Simplicity has it been like proven on Earth and then how much water does it produce how much power does it use and the one that came out on top of was using vibration with a size-based lunar separation coming in second and then in third the drilling then after we created our
• 110:00 - 110:30 similar solution M Matrix we were then to able to develop our design specifications so our criteria includes that we need to use vibration and also achieve a concentration of simulated ice to at least 20% and this will allow us to to see if we're able to achieve that and have a measurable outcome when testing some of our constraints is that we have a budget of approximately $100 to spend within the next six months and we also need to be able to create a device that can withstand very low temperatures in those psrs on the moon
• 110:30 - 111:00 and our testing uh densities for the ice is around 1 Point gram per cubic centimeter and our regul is around 1.5 grams per cubic centimeter yes so we then took these design specifications and researched accordingly we continued research on vibration and magnetics so with vibration we can use Paso discs to create vibration which have a very large frequency range but a small amplitude range whereas speaker drivers have have a larger amplitude range but smaller frequency uh range um we also saw that copper because we need to stay in that super low temperature 400 degrees
• 111:00 - 111:30 Fahrenheit copper and an alloy copper nickel can withstand temperatures below -400 degrees Fahrenheit around 415 so around absolute zero which is the temperatures we're looking at and also on the top right you can see an image of how the vibration can be implemented with the particles on flat plate and the vibration is angled and that way the particles can actually move through across plane magnets on the other hand like I mentioned earlier you experimenting with paramagnetism and diamagnetism so they should inherently
• 111:30 - 112:00 separate in the presence of a strong magnetic field however the theory behind magnets tends to break down especially on the unknown conditions of the psrs so we can't really test this on Earth which is why we can't move forward with it right now but it was one really good idea that we did find so then we took all of our sketches and ideas for how we can solve this problem we developed and we put them into our decision Matrix and rank them again based on the specifications that would make the project useful useful to NASA so the two we came up with that were the most helpful was a vibration on
• 112:00 - 112:30 a flat plate where the less dense particles would move both to the outside and very inside of the plate leaving a ring of the more dense particles around it and the other one we use was like said the angled vibratory movement which would move the less dense particles further along a plate than the denser particles yes and then moving forward from our decision Matrix we then combine these two ideas into annotated sketches so on the left you will see the angle vibratory movement and how the lighter particles can travel up the ramp and into a collection container for future use and on the right is the square plate
• 112:30 - 113:00 on top of a vibration motor that will allow the lighter particles to travel to the middle of the cay so this led us to our CAD model we're using a 15-inch subwoofer but we can also change this we we went from smaller like a 3in speaker to a 15-inch subwoofer just because we get that larger amplitude range and we can see the angled ramp and this is on a stand that can adjust so we can test for different angles and then also we have another play afterwards because we have one degree of separation then the other degree adds another um way of separating
• 113:00 - 113:30 it so that we have an even greater concentration of ice where the less dense particles will go to the middle of the um second plate and then a small door can drop down to let them out so what are we going to do moving forward we're going to continue looking into using vibration and both these methods both the angular or sorry the angled horizontal movement and the flat plate separate by density so we're going to continue to test a number of different amplitudes and frequencies with our speaker and we're going to continue to create our prototype system so here we have a video of the in use so
• 113:30 - 114:00 as you can see we used a lighter pepper and then we use a heavier that that is the um ABS plastic that we cut off of the filament and as you can see the lighter pepper because we couldn't find any concrete powder the lighter pepper moves off the end of the vibration plate and is collected in our jar there at the end while the heavier materials remain behind the one thing we we did make sure to keep in this is the difference of density between them they still have about half a gram per cubic centimeter difference so it's just a matter of
• 114:00 - 114:30 increasing or decreasing the frequency to find the one that works with the actual stimulant thank you so much and if we have any questions okay I'm a little confused you had pepper but you couldn't find dirt so so the dirt particles were really big and didn't want because the size shouldn't be the um the separation Factor so we wanted to keep the con uh the constant density between them so we
• 114:30 - 115:00 chose density over size because the main point of it was like size is really similar so we didn't want that okay and that's fine um but I mean uh so one of the things that you're going to have some difficulty with is that there is going to be gravel in there right so not only are you going to be dealing with very fine particles of lunar regolith there we're also going to have some uh larger particles at least the size of
• 115:00 - 115:30 you know P's and maybe quarters and things like that does that make sense yeah and so um a bag of concrete shouldn't cost you more than about $3 and if you can get a smaller bag it doesn't hurt my feelings at all and so um now so right now you've got some some abs plastic is that what you have yeah okay and just know that ABS plastic will work but of course if
• 115:30 - 116:00 you can get something that's closer to the density of ice you'll get even more separation okay okay and it looks so you've already gotten your speakers to to vibrate for you and be able to give you some kind of Separation that's very exciting and that was uh if we go back a little bit that was because the the angle just because it pushes it the speaker VI pushes a vibration in an angle whereas the plate just acts as a medium where that vibration is transported okay now and do you have an
• 116:00 - 116:30 idea of what you're going to do with the um the uh the regali that does not shift out how how does it how do you get rid of the regali while you are moving the um the uh ice particles so we were thinking of like a trap door at the back so periodically you'll have like a number of or the just our raw soil goes in and then we'll have all the ice particles flow off the end
• 116:30 - 117:00 and then periodically on some time delay we'll have a trap door at the back open and all the the dust that is or the dust or rocks that were not light enough to go off the end and more ice will fall out the back yeah and then as we continue developing this we we want to make it one of the main things was making it like a continuous process rather than batch process has to stop and reset um so the continuous process will we we just have to to kind of think more through it how how to actually make it continuous uh but that will come as we finalize most of the frequencies and
• 117:00 - 117:30 all that sounds good Dave you got a suggest you got any thoughts so uh can you describe how you're adjusting the frequency you you have speakers um do you have something that you can control uh the power input or you can you can adjust the Hertz on these speakers yeah so we're using a stereo amplifier I don't know if you guys can see that it's essentially just the stereo amplifier that we then plug into our laptops and
• 117:30 - 118:00 we use a waveform generator to create all different frequencies of sound and then that's just play through very good okay that's awesome can can you stop sharing and show us that that you're using yeah there's and then here's the subwoofer with the angle play very good okay okay now so here I I see that you've got
• 118:00 - 118:30 a a cardboard piece on there which is which is perfectly fine for the beginning it do you have a plan for what other materials you might want to try yeah so we mentioned in the presentation we wanted to try copper just because that's most realistic it can withstand the super low negative 415 degrees uh temperature and it keeps one thing to we have to pay attention to when we're vibrating is the material stiffness because we don't want the end because the vibration goes to the middle of the material and so we
• 118:30 - 119:00 don't want the ends of the material kind of like like waving so we wanted to keep the material stiff and that's what copper does so right now on the bottom we actually have cardboard we have a polycarbonate sheet which is still flexible but much less flexible than cardboard okay very good and and the shape of it is also going to prove to be interesting um and exactly which things are going to work the best I don't know but I I like what you've got started here good job team you I do too Flo do
• 119:00 - 119:30 you have any thoughts well just that when you keep talking about frequency and amplitude I keep thinking about sign curves so that's what tells you the frequency and amplitude right of any uh anything so if you come across a good frequency and amplitude you could demonstrate it you know document it with the with the sign curve that fits their
• 119:30 - 120:00 qualifications because during our testing during our testing we actually recorded a data sheet with it and our best separation frequency was around 73 Hertz that's like in the video that's what's portrayed so that's important information that you need to um let us know when you're when you're doing that so cool cool well I as a math teacher so of course I think about s I'm interested in what Nancy has to say yeah Nancy no I I really like what they're doing and I
• 120:00 - 120:30 love their design and the drawing and everything and I think they're on a a good path because I know some of the other students have been trying to use a speaker not everyone has had success and it sounds like you guys are getting some good data so good to see that so keep it up yeah and your PowerPoint was awesome too your presentation everyone talked was really cool thank you so much do you have any questions for
• 120:30 - 121:00 us um so you said a a group kind of bought like pellets like are those do you know any more details about that because we were as we were cutting them it's just it's so time yeah what one other team said it took them eight hours to make like a a quarter of a cup of that stuff so um uh the pellets that was uh that was the New Jersey team that they bought pellets so I can find you the information about
• 121:00 - 121:30 that but they actually had really good pellets that were of good uh size and everything already made um well the pellets were kind of big um and so if we can if you can get pellets and then grind them down somehow kind of like you know using a um uh a coffee grinder or a blender or something like that I think it'll work okay the pellets were 3 millimeters they said oh that's right
• 121:30 - 122:00 they said and that that sounds really homogeneous to me I think it's it's a good starting point yeah it is a my two comments are number one as Glenn was saying go to a local hardware store you know an Ace Hardware or Home Depot lows any of those places and buy a bag of Portland cement right that's that's your regulin um another thought is we've had
• 122:00 - 122:30 teams working on different projects that have actually used um paper shredders to grind up like ABS pla both that's a great answer they do work right now you you're probably going to be dedicating that Shredder to your purpose I don't know that it's going to go back and as a as a paper shredder but that's that's another way to think about doing that so yeah we
• 122:30 - 123:00 don't want you to spend hours cutting up thing about the thing about the the something like a paper shredder you we we you you don't want this to be too homogeneous right I cannot imagine that all these crystals are going to be of the same size Etc right they're going to vary significant l so you want some that is almost as finely ground as as the regolith itself but you need bigger chunks Etc so you just need to find some
• 123:00 - 123:30 way in a blender like I say a shredder anything like that that you can grind up some plastic so okay yeah than and if you start with like 3D printing uh filament that that'll make it much easier for whatever you're grinding it in does that make sense yeah so you ALS have a lot of residue you know if you guys are if you guys are doing a lot of 3D printing you have a lot of extra stuff left over
• 123:30 - 124:00 right and that that's a great source you can just dump that into something that you can grind it up with that's a smart idea the scaffolding that you have to scrape off use that it's recycling oh my gosh recycling yeah but I do want you to wear masks when you're doing with s the men and grinding the uh plastic oh what do you have there Mr gner it's on the back of the truck for
• 124:00 - 124:30 about a week it's just 60 pounds they can't carry it yeah it's 60 pound bag of sacer they just can't carry it we can carry it yeah yeah all right well that we we did actually look at buying like injection molding pellets they were just like you said too big yeah just look for a way to cut them down some I think it'll be good okay and
• 124:30 - 125:00 they're ABS or what are they ABS yeah okay yeah no I think that that those would work fine if you can if you can just cut them down a little bit but it would also work just to just to show that they will rise through your regolith uh with the vibration okay good team thank you thank you all right thank you and any other questions you can always send them to me and I'll
• 125:00 - 125:30 send them on to whoever I need to thank you so much you guys have a wonderful week great great PowerPoint too by the way really nicely done and your presentation all right that's it for today so we are good