Over the past month, instead of learning by creating circuits hands-on, I’ve been researching how to build an actual radio telescope. Now, I’ve been doing this the whole time, but since summer is just around the corner (and that’s when I plan to start), I’ve been doing a deep dive into what really goes into building something like this. Other than motorized movement, I haven’t decided what I need for the build. Of course, I’ll need a satellite dish—but what kind? What Low-Noise Block downconverter (LNB) should I use, and what’s the best use case for each type?
There are still a lot of decisions I’m going to have to make before I begin, so in the meantime, I’ll just try to get more comfortable creating circuits while I figure everything out. It’ll take a while, but I think I should be ready to begin right when I get out of school.
This project wasn’t incredibly laborious, but it was complex and required a bit of research to figure out. I made a light that could turn on when I touched the end of a wire. This works because of a physical property of the human body—it acts as a capacitor, storing up an electric charge. This means that if I build a circuit properly, I can turn an LED on just by touching one end of a wire.
After doing some thorough research, just to make sure I wouldn’t be shocked to death from touching an exposed wire, I began building it. It wasn’t too tedious, just one or two wires and resistors here and there, and I was done. Now came the moment of truth, as always: would it work?
After this risky but successful attempt, I plan to begin construction soon. I might do one or two more mini-projects just to make sure I’ve got the hang of it, but I feel pretty confident right now. I won’t really know how it’ll go until I begin, but there’s only a month and a half left until I find out. In the meantime, I’ll keep you all posted.