A Celebrity Guest

Who is this woman, you might ask - at least if you don't watch "Schrödingers Cat." This is Gry Beate Molvær and she will fly with us as our team journalist. We are a bit honored and very happy to have Norway's most famous science journalist with us.

Tekna did a long interview with her back in 2003.

Arabidopsis Thaliana

The plant whose seeds we will primarily use is called Arabidopsis Thaliana, Thale Cress, Mouse-Ear Cress and/or Vårskrinneblom. It is related to cabbage and mustard plants. The plant seeds are tiny, the diameter is less than 1 mm.

The plant is used extensively in biology experiments due to its short generation timespan (6 weeks) and because the genome is small and reasonably well known. (Wikipedia)

New Rack design

Here is our new rack design. The microscope is covered by a "tent" made out of cloth of preferably transparent plastic of some sort. This fulfills the requirement that we seal of any point at which a water leak could occur. The electrical circuitry is still not drawn.
This links to a complete (.jpg) schematic.

The rack will be installed along one side wall of the aircraft cabin.

Color dye tests

Basit and I tested the prototype today, we added green food colour to the injected water. It is obvious that the entire polypropylene felt is not wetted in the current construction. Perhaps we will need a smaller diameter of the felt, we are considering reducing the diameter of the felt from 2.5mm to 2mm. We got some great video with the HDV camera (including Basit's nose), Basit can hopefully add some stills soon!