Sam Nadol ‘24

Field of study: Static Sonic Anemometers

Why did you pursue this project?

Originally, I wanted to do this project with light: measuring the time it takes light to travel over a certain distance and calculating the difference between the expected and the measured speed; the difference would be positive if the object was moving along the same axis as the light and negative if moving “against” the light - if this worked, it could directly measure the velocity of an object, instead of having to use an accelerometer and integrate that over time to get velocity. However, it turns out that this is physically impossible (the device would always read the velocity as 0m/s; all observers see the speed of light as the same speed), so I switched to using sound instead. This lets us measure the speed of the object relative to the atmosphere, or, more usefully, the speed of the atmosphere relative to the object.

Outside of ISRP, I enjoy competitive fencing and was part of Hackley’s Varsity team. I also enjoy working on my team’s robot for the MATE ROV competition, as well as making things, programming, and running my nonprofit RebootPC. 

International Genius Olympiad 2024 Finalist
WESEF 2024 - IBM Visionary Engineering Award
WESEF 2023 - Momentive Solutions for a Sustainable World Award