NOTE: I might just totally revise this later. Or del it. If I’m not lazy.
So, I wrote up a little bit for the teacher, so I’m just going to paste it
here, and hopefully I’ll end up writing something else that actually talks
more about my project, because it’s _really_ cool.

Once upon a time, I was contemplating joining the California
Conservation Corps Backcountry Trails program. This was when I was working
at the Del Norte Center, and my friend and center director David Boyd
(currently director of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority) and I were
chatting about the refrigeration system they use in the woods. This system
involves submerged plastic coolers, with mules bringing in rock-solid frozen
meat and milk, and burlap sacks placed over the tops of the coolers which
were to be constantly wet throughout the day, providing for multiple cooling
techniques. He then proceeded to tell me about an ancient technique, of how
people opened coolers during the night, and eventually made ice. What?!
That.s impossible, improbable, and all other im-words. Insane!
Flash-forward: Summer, 2005. Lonny Grafman talks about potential projects,
including one he has a grant for. What?! Make ice in the desert? Somebody
else knows about that? Wants somebody to work on it?! No way! And the
journey begins..

This part is not as exciting as it could be, so I’ll have to write something
else, and more, later..
So, instead of working on trying to get pack goats into the woods,
I’ve worked on making hielo en el desierto. This has definitely been an
interesting and exciting experience in many ways, one which I was very
nervous about at first because it seemed like such an impossible dream, and
I know so little about materials and their properties, having never studied
during my “Properties of Materials” class. So we began, and it was a lot of
fun! I have never considered myself a truly hands-on/construction-oriented
person, so this has proven to be a great opportunity to try a few different
things, as well as to build more confidence in being able to make something
that I want or need. Unfortunately there occurred some degree of slacking
during the project, causing us to get a little later start than planned, and
missing some “important steps.” Seeing as how we were the first or second
group to start on our project, and the first to start playing with results,
that curve doesn’t seem to indicate that we slacked. And it’s hard to know
if it was more on my part, Armeda’s, or the program’s setup/structure and
how there was a feeling of not having much time. Regardless, we got some
data.
One of the key errors was in believing Lonny Grafman telling me the
dewpoint’s so low here, and that it’s not humid. If we had started on our
research paper earlier, and with more seriously, I would not have been able
to blindly accept that assumption, because it would have had to go in the
paper as such. However, finding that out now makes our project not a
failure, so it’s really a nice way to end the project. And while I gained
some confidence in some areas, I definitely was not sure how to start
looking for materials that we needed and could use, some of which might have
been really cool materials like better insulating box/material, possibly a
better material that allowed IR radiation through, etc. It was
semi-daunting, and hopefully I have learned from that in order to be less
daunted in the future. Well, I think that’s a paragraph, so that’s probably
a good time for a wrap. To the weblog with yee! J

References:
Found off google searching
For: refrigeration (“night sky” || “deep space”)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1982PhDT……..30M&db_key=INST&data_type=HTML&format=
http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/atlas/htmlu/phlectdintro.html

“lunar collector”
http://files.chatnfiles.com/Space%20and%20Astronomy/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_1/V15NO116.TXT
http://www.a-matter.com/eng/projects/Egyptian-Nationalmuseum-pr080-energie3-s.asp
Different search engine, radiative cooling and similar terms:
ATM Dark Ideas
TECHNICAL PAPER #48

  
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