Update: Week 2

A lot happened during Week 2 for our project! First off, we got another team member bringing the total of team members for our project up to three. The next big thing we decided to do was change the entire project. Instead of testing the conductivity and strength of epoxy with different fillers we decided to go a simpler route. We had previously decided to do the epoxy experiment as a demonstration for the materials camp that Drexel Hosts for high school students in the summer. Because a lot of the components of the conductivity lab were very complicated and required a great deal of machinery to complete the demonstration we decided a different route might be a better option. We toyed around with several others ideas of what we could do for the project until we stumbled upon pykrete. Pykrete is essentially ice that has specific percentages of wood pulp and sawdust inside of it. The wood pulp and sawdust help strengthen the ice making it deemed "bullet proof".  In addition, another really cool feature about pykrete is that it takes a long time to melt and because of this is said to have been used to make different types of boats during World War II. The boats would be used for their specific purpose and then left to melt. For our experiment we decided that we could do a demonstration of pykrete versus ice to show the strengthening properties that wood pulp and sawdust have on ice.

http://www.pykretedome.com/#!pykrete/ 

<-- this is an example of Pykrete. The tan discoloration in the ice is due to the wood pulp.