A Look At Intel ISEF 2004

crl620 writes "Just this past Friday marked the end of the 2004 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF). This year's ISEF took place in Portland, Oregon with more than 1,200 participants. Over $3 million was given out and three grand winners left with $50,000. Winning projects include a homemade Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and a brain-computer interface for the muscularly disabled. My picture diary of this huge event can be found here."

Comments

Re:damn

[AKAImBatman]

Did you consider compressing the helium? Compressed gasses take up less space, so you would have needed a much smaller envelope.

I'm not completely up to speed on airship technology, but my understanding is that this presents two problems:

1. To compress the helium, you need a stronger gasbag structure. Making the gasbag stronger makes it heavier, thus defeating the purpose of compressing it.

2. Compressing the gas simply adds more gas for the same amount of displacement. Thus you've actually made the blimp or rigid airship heavier instead of lighter.

Keep in mind that airships work by displacing air like boats displace water. The only reason that helium helps generate lift is that it adds structural integrity to the airframe/gasbag while being lighter than if it had been filled with air. The absolute BEST airframe is a complete vacuum. However, an absolute vacuum would require much stronger materials (1-1.5 atmospheres of pressure on the materials vs. a pressure of .01 atmospheres in a standard blimp). These stronger materials would of course be heavier and thus defeat any gains you would get by creating a vacuum.