kown5      

April 27, 2005, Wednesday:    Progress Notes:   Water Kites--kites made of just water!       

During the night I kept waking to some flashes about the project.
  • Rotating a plastic tube fast while the water inside the tube is frozen. The rotation may give special useful characteristics to the ice. After the thickness of the ice tube is as wanted, then remove the out parts of the plastic tube form. Save the ice tube for a strut.  Find out the mechanical qualities of an ice tube made in this fashion compared to other fashion. Save the facts for design purposes for the dynamic water kite designs.
     
  • People who are living in regions where the air temperature is below freezing will have some advantage over ice-kite builders who rely on freezers in their homes or work.
     
  • For small water kites, the freezer of a home's food refrigerator can be a parts-making laboratory.
     
  • Forming half-oblate shells on gravity-caused drooping plastic sheets can give a supply of halves that can be ice-welded together to get the full oblate form.  The method might be used to form two halves of strut tubes.
     
  • Targeting a hot melting tool like a soldering iron for sculpting kite parts may be interesting.
     
  • Consider weather-watching for freezing-cold and dry winds.
     
  • Airplane-shaped water kites will be one category of successful water kites.
     
  •  In certain weather conditions, a water kite will fly and grow in mass from "icing" over its own ice parts.
     
  • If the water kite is a man-lifter, then one could drink some of the kite when thirsty.
     
  • Popsicle™  does not want the dessert ice to be rock-hard; that direction is probably opposite to what a water-kite builder would want. The company's research data on water ice probably would be rich in notes interesting to the water-kite builder.
     
  • Know well release films, oils, materials for use in forms that will make the kite parts.
     
  • Will scratch and re-fill over scratch become an interesting technique?
     
  • Bridling....multiple connect points may be key for some water-kite designs.
     
  • Encapsulating air bubbles and air chambers in the water kite will occur naturally; careful planning of chambers will be a part of many successful water kite designs.
     
  • http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/thayer/research/ice-engg.html  Thermally heat ice or snow momentarily in order to increase friction with the ice. See also the icicle photograph.
     
  • National Science Foundation might be interested in supporting research regarding kites made just of water. Just one very strong application might drive their interest.
     
  • Tired of fabric, Christo covers Maine building with ice in latest artistic triumph
     
  • Ice on moon, on planets, on comets.
     
  • Ice is used for transport: skiing, skating, sleighing, etc.  Ice will be used for some specialized kites made just of ice.
     
  • Alain has an interest in kites and ice sculpture. See the wings on an ice totem: "Once again, this sculpture is big, unfeasible, and has floating wings..."  http://www.comnet.ca/~alain/alain/picsta3.htm    I will invite Alain  to this water-kite project.
     
  •  Ice building in the book 'Ice Palaces, by Fred Anderes and Ann Agranoff published in 1983 by Abbeville Press
     
  • ILL Annual Report for 1997, where the discovery of a new form of ice. [ ] Research this. See: http://www.physorg.com/news3770.html
  • ""Researchers at the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC) announced that they have obtained spectroscopic evidence suggesting that a possible new phase of ice may exist at temperatures between 4 K to 50 K, under high pressure. ""
  • August 22, 2002  U of Guelph physicists discover new form of ice. University of Guelph physicists have discovered a new form of ice that could have implications in preserving organs, embryos and other life forms.
  • "A NEW FORM OF ICE has been predicted to form at high pressures. Ice has more solid forms than any other simple substance, with 10 known crystalline structures. Using molecular dynamics simulations, a German-French-Italian team has now predicted that "Ice XI" forms between 3 and 4 Megabars of pressure at room temperature. The oxygen atoms arrange themselves into a distorted hexagonal close-packed (hcp) lattice, a densely-packed structure in which atoms essentially occupy the corners of equilateral triangles. Interestingly, Ice XI is an insulator up to and beyond 7 Mbars, the kinds of pressures at which ice exists in Jupiter. Numerous physicists have proposed that ice may become metallic at high pressures, but the simulations suggest that Jovian ice may not necessarily be metallic. The pressures that would be required to make Ice XI can be experimentally achieved in diamond anvil cells, the authors point out. (M. Benoit et al, upcoming paper in Phys. Rev. Lett.)"   Source of clip: http://www.aip.org/pnu/1996/split/pnu262-3.htm
     
  • Today's experiment brought some neat success: Using a notebook paper two-ply protector of plastic to hold a film of water for freezing resulted in a nicely thin large leaf of ice that looked suitable for some kite building. Posted this in Successes Log 
     
  • World Ice Art Championships. 
  • http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v52/p1312
  • [ ] Invite ice artists to the Ice Kite Project.
  • [ ] http://www.laiceart.com/       Ice Eagle    [Could be an Ice Kite (bird in ice).] 
    The page has "one block soaring eagle also available"  This is getting close!  :)
    Ice Sculptures by Rex Covington-LA (323) 937-8485    On April 27, 2005, I invited Rex Covington to join in on the ice-kite project.


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