Our preliminary visit to the Penonome campus of UTP went very well.
This photo shows the front of the campus building in Panama City of the Universidad Technologica de Panama: This is a view of the front entrance at the Penonome campus: We are arranging to use a couple of rooms in the Mechanical Engineering building for through-ceiling mounting of the pendulums. Here is a general view of one of the rooms; the other is similar, but the arrangements will be orthogonal. Note the reinforced concrete pillar and beams; these are structural members of the building, and are very strong. This is a view of the ceiling, showing the pillar and beams and where we plan to pierce the aperture for passing the pendulum. This shows the situation upstairs. We plan to lay a block of concrete here, about 1 meter square and 30 cm thick, weighing about 750 kg, with the pendulum aperture passing through its middle. (Of course, after the experiments are concluded, these depredations can be easily corrected; they do not involve any alterations to the main structure of the building.) Here we are consulting with some of the campus personnel, checking the blueprints in order to verify that the structure is rated to support such a mass in such a location. We have also conceived a plan for a parallel experiment, to be carried out by some of the students as a project. The idea is to set up one or two relatively long pendulums - about 5 meters long - in this vacant structure which supports a disused water tank: With a pendulum of such a length, the necessity for a very heavy support is not so serious - in fact, many of the difficulties one experiences with operating a one-meter paraconical pendulum become moot - so that this arrangement may be expected to yield very interesting and meaningful results. This photo shows the entrance to the water tower house: -o0o- Back to the What's New page. Back to our website main page.
