{"id":28364,"date":"2020-01-17T07:45:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T13:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=28364"},"modified":"2020-01-17T00:21:40","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T06:21:40","slug":"apsu-physics-students-launch-hops-into-stratosphere-for-new-strawberry-alley-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2020\/01\/17\/apsu-physics-students-launch-hops-into-stratosphere-for-new-strawberry-alley-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU physics students launch hops into stratosphere for new Strawberry Alley beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – In the waning light of a January afternoon, a group of Austin Peay State University (APSU) physics students pushed through branches and saplings as they hiked up a steep hill outside of Carthage, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

The team of young researchers was looking for a high-altitude weather balloon they\u2019d launched 93,000 feet into the stratosphere earlier that day.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University students launch weather balloon with hops onboard for new Strawberry Alley beer. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

A tracking device, attached to the balloon, led them more than 100 miles from campus into that dark canopy of trees, and when they finally found the payload and its parachute, a hopeless \u201cwhat do we do now?\u201d expression caused their teeth to clinch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a rough hike, really steep, and we found it about 60 feet up in a tree,\u201d Bryan Gaither, Austin Peay State University physics, astronomy and engineering lab manager, said. \u201cIt was going to be a long day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaither clipped on his tree-climbing gear and slowly made his way toward the stranded payload. To the west, the sun sank deeper behind the hillside, casing the mild winter air to drop several degrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were fighting daylight hard and my hands were cramping,\u201d Gaither said. \u201cI got all the way up to as high as my gear would let me go, and then I pulled up this 16-foot pole saw, and for an hour and a half I worked at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The marooned payload carried important scientific data the team wanted to recover, but Gaither also hoped to retrieve the two special containers he\u2019d attached to the balloon that morning. Inside were beer hops that had traveled high into that hazy region known as near space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want some hoppy beer out of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

High-altitude beer<\/h3>\n
\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University physics students launch the balloon from Downtown Commons. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier that day, Wes Cunningham with Strawberry Alley Ale Works stood in Clarksville\u2019s Downtown Commons park, watching the APSU physics students inflate a large, two-kilogram weather balloon. A loud hiss accompanied the process, causing a few morning commuters to pause and look suspiciously at Cunningham and the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was Bryan\u2019s crazy idea to send up a balloon with some beer hops,\u201d Cunningham said. \u201cHe\u2019s going to send up some hops to near space, and once it comes back down, we\u2019re going to brew a special batch of beer with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

[320left]For the last few months, Austin Peay State University has worked to expand its reach into downtown Clarksville, partnering with local businesses on different initiatives. In September, the College of STEM launched its monthly \u201cScience on Tap\u201d lecture series, which features APSU faculty presenting fascinating scientific talks inside Strawberry Alley Ale Works. In December, when the University\u2019s football team made its historic playoff run, Austin Peay State University hosted a game watch party, sponsored by Fortera Credit Union, at the downtown restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great when you can find ways to tie the university and the community together,\u201d Dr. Karen Meisch, dean of the APSU College of STEM, said.<\/p>\n

 Strawberry Alley will host a tapping party for the special beer later this spring.<\/p>\n

Actual Science<\/h3>\n
\"Strawberry<\/a>

Strawberry Alley teamed up with Austin Peay State University’s Physics, Engineering and Astronomy program. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

Last June, APSU physics student Zach Hill, along with fellow student Zach Givens, attended Rocket Week at NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, where he helped send Austin Peay\u2019s first payload into space.<\/p>\n

Seven months later, on that chilly but clear January morning in Downtown Commons, Hill made a final check of his equipment before sending it into the stratosphere. Launching beer hops 96,000 feet into the air makes for a fun story around the bar, but Hill\u2019s work \u2013 the main reason for that day\u2019s balloon launch \u2013 may put APSU one step closer to one day having an actual satellite in space.<\/p>\n

For the project, he used a wireless technology called ZigBee to test the ability for different payload boxes to send data to each other during a flight.<\/p>\n

[320right]\u201cZigBee is a wireless protocol similar in some ways to Bluetooth,\u201d Hill said. \u201cEssentially it’s just a way for two devices to communicate with each other wirelessly. What I have been working on is a way to connect different balloon payloads running different experiments together wirelessly so that we can break a large experiment up into multiple parts. My payloads recorded things like temperature, pressure and acceleration and communicated that using ZigBee to a device which recorded the data.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the ZigBee works better than Bluetooth technology, then the department will look at sending up two balloons to see if they can communicate with each other. From there, it\u2019s just a short leap to recording data from an Austin Peay State University satellite.<\/p>\n

Once Hill finished checking the payloads, he stepped away so Gaither, wearing a Strawberry Alley T-Shirt, could release the balloon into the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we have tracking data?\u201d Gaither shouted. The students checked their phones, confirming that they would be able to track the balloon.<\/p>\n

After a brief countdown, Gaither released the balloon, which quickly rose into the air. The Austin Peay State University physics team packed up their gear and headed off in pursuit of the balloon. On the way to one of the trucks, someone said they hoped it would land in an open field, making for an easy day\u2019s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – In the waning light of a January afternoon, a group of Austin Peay State University (APSU) physics students pushed through branches and saplings as they hiked up a steep hill outside of Carthage, Tennessee. The team of young researchers was looking for a high-altitude weather balloon they\u2019d launched 93,000 feet into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,30582,262,16712,34453,512,825,31248,27767,11021,33762,33984,32833,34454,33760],"class_list":["post-28364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-apsu","tag-apsu-college-of-stem","tag-austin-peay-state-university","tag-bryan-gaither","tag-carthage-tn","tag-clarksville","tag-clarksville-tn","tag-downtown-commons","tag-fortera-credit-union","tag-karen-meisch","tag-nasas-wallops-flight-facility","tag-science-on-tap","tag-strawberry-alley-ale-works","tag-wes-cunningham","tag-zach-hill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7nu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28365,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28364\/revisions\/28365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}