Setting up outside

I was told yesterday that March is now the hottest month of the year in Ghana. Since I've been here, the temperature has been in the high 80's and relative humidity between 70% and 80% each day. It's only 11:15am and the temperature outside is 88 degrees. Some of you know how much I complained during the winter. Well, I'm complaining in Ghana as well. Thank God my office and bedroom are air conditioned and so I don't have to melt for too long.

QCLOPS has been doing well so far. Last week, we ran it at a short distance since we did not want people going across the laser beam while we were collecting data. The goal this week is to run it at a distance of about 137ft. Due to heavy human traffic (students), we will be mounting the retro reflector on a wall. We need it to be high enough that no one can interfere with our signal. The new mount is still under construction in the machine shop. It's taking them a while but they are almost done.

One question we had in mind was how far we could change the distance between the retro-reflector and the launch mirror and still see a high enough return signal. On monday, we tested this on the porch right infront of the lab. Our lab is on the third floor. To do this, we had to bring everything out and run it (ie. without air conditioning). We were able to go beyond 137ft and still get a return signal. This meant we did not have any excuse not to see a signal at the actual designated location. As we sat out aligning, there were a lot of curious students who stopped by and asked us to explain to them what we were doing. I really enjoyed talking to them. They were excited to see something practical......science in action!

On tuesday we placed the retro-reflector at the designated location and we were able to see a signal!! We ran the system overnight, blocking off the porch, till this morning.See pictures!



Today, I got the chance to speak to the 3rd year physics students. They were in about 4 different groups. I think there were a total of about 40 students. That was interesting. Some of them were very interested in the equipment. Although it was tiring, I enjoyed it very much.

~Ekua