The project that will kick start Moonkey Laboratory is an electrolyte experiment. The plan is to create a water cylinder with axial electrodes and fill it with various ratios of manganese solution, then connect the electrodes to a Tektronix 576 curve tracer in order to find the I-V curve of the solution. This curve will be compared to a control of de-ionized water and various other electrolyte solutions in order to gain a better understanding of the properties of manganese.
electrolyte solutions of interest will be incorporated into mediums like BG-11 to grow experimental populations of cyanobacteria and fungi cultures. The cultures for these bacteria and fungi will be sampled from Brevard County’s Indian River Lagoon.
Future Projects
Plants & Ants
Goal: The lab’s literal pet project. This will be a sandbox for researching a population of ants. the core will be a stable nitrogen cycle and ideal ant environment. Then to the side will be a network of modular experimentation chambers which will have custom sensors and controllers to create the conditions to test a specific parameter of interest within the cycle.
Corundum synthesis
Goal: To grow corundum spheres, and develop a way to introduce impurities into the lattice to achieve arbitrary filtering properties
Alumina Production
Some lab resources will be invested in creating novel production methods for alumina components (e.g. terminal strips, and circuit boards for extreme conditions). Wetting the surface of alumina with silver alloy traces sounds like a good skill to have at the ready.
