I feel as though very few are using aerogels. A friend of mine did a research paper on the matter, and ran into very many financial walls. Silica gels are too expensive to be practical for a student-student competition. Exposing the silica gel would consistently throw off your data as it absorbs more water. The gel would absorb more and more water (to a limit), increasing the energy transferred from the water to the gel.Alex-RCHS wrote:For those using aerogel: are you worried at all about long-term viability? Since it is a powerful dessicant, I feel that it shouldn't be exposed to the humid air in the device. What do you all think?
On a side note:
For those who have data right now, what kind of curves are you using to predict your temperature? I have tried all variants of sinusoidal curves, which have a correlation of >0.9999, while more common relationships such as linear or quadratic are consistently < 0.999. Small difference? Not quite. Linear relationships are often < 0.1 C off of the actual value. Has anyone solved this, or has anyone had the same problems as myself? I have about 40 hours of data, with no hope of this annoyance going away. I've graphed and found the relationships between the parametric variables, with little success. What relationships do you all use, and if you have a sinusoidal curve, how did you overcome its inherent challenges? How were you able to derive the parametric variables from the given information? (Initial Temp, Room Temp, etc)
Like Hovercraft last year, I have to use some pretty complex math to be as accurate as possible. Last year I learned basic trigonometry, now I've learned integral Calculus. SciOly is a gift and a curse: your social life crashes, but hey, you're 3 years ahead in math.