Mechanical Planetarium
by
, 08-15-2015 at 03:26 AM (516 Views)
I was working with a group of students to build a new planetarium on campus. We had this big concrete foundation and another student had built this machine that modeled the orbits of all the planets in the solar system. The planets went around on circular metal tracks driven by gears. The sun was a giant light bulb, about 6' in diameter. The entire thing was powered by the wind running into this vent and turning a generator.
The professor who was my astronomy prof from earlier in the summer was happy with how the solar system model worked, but I pointed out that once we built the building around it, there would be no wind and it would no longer work. I stumped him and the DC who had built the model; another student. The other student got really mad at me because he thought that I broke his project.