Very interesting day..   I found out late last week that my friend Tim in Corporate had gotten some extra money to film the third installment in his ‘Mad Science’ series on IBM’s Smarter Planet program (I’ve already posted the link to the first one he did) .
The catch is.. the money had to be spent this week. I like doing these vids because I think they help raise folks awareness of how technology can help the environment..   I managed to clear my calendar today to help with filming. I met Tim and the film crew at about 10 this mornign and we began working on a story.. this movie would be about managing water quality in places like Lake Champlain.

The story took us to the Champlain Water District, the utility that provides drinking water to south burlington. shelbourne, essex and jericho.   I’d driven by it for years without noticing it.   The guys at CWD were amazingly nice, smart and helpful.. they showed us their hold setup.. it was really impressive.. I never new there was so much science behind clean water !

I was amazed at the array of chemicals it takes to make the water safe and healthful…..

Our first stop was the sampling station on Potash Brook.. this is where they measure temp. flow, turbidity ph, organics, etc for the water entering the lake. There are hundreds of small stations like this around the area.

The instrumentation in the control room was pretty fancy..

This was my favorite instrument.. this shows the water temperature profile near the two big intakes for the water system which are both about a half mile off shore at about 75 down.   The colors map to temperature.. you can see the shapr line between the wamr surface water and the colder deep water.. This scan was actually from this summer.. the real temperature today was all blue.. as in .. the low 40’s .. which proved to be pretty chilly as I later found out.

One cool feature of these plots is the periodic humps which occur at roughly 3 day period.. it’s evidence of the seiche, (isn’t

that a COOL WORD ?!?!) an underwater standing wave that traverses north

south in Lake Champlain all the time. it’s caused by the prevailing

north wind.. As you can see on the plot it makes a HUGE difference in

the distribution of the water temp.. which in turn allows the water

guys to adjust their treatment..

After we got those shots, we went to Echo to film the rest.. It was already near 3 PM.. and the sun was setting.. so we did our last shot next.. it involved me jumping out of a canoe into Lake Champlain.. Did I mention that the water was in the low 40s.. and it was in the low 30’s out.. and that it was snowing ?   I don’t want to give away the story line ..  so you’ll have to watch the vid to see why…

Anyway.. it was C-O-L-D out there !  Time was nervous thta he’d end up in the water too !!!!!

And guess what… I did manage to tip over the canoe.. and Tim went in too.. It was… uh… cold.. I mean really cold… but it was funnier than it was cold.. I was laughing hard enough to keep myself from freezing as I pulled the canoe over to the doc. Man, I hope they got the shot.. ‘cuz I wasn’t about to do it again..

We ran inside and dried off..  

As soon as our teeth stopped chattering we got in dry clothers and went and shot the rest of the vid in Echo with the ancient Sturgeons in the tank looking on..

.It’s 6 hours sinc eI was in the lake.. and I just realized I’m finally warm.. Never a dull moment…  

OK.. I need to leave around 4 AM tomorrow morning so I need to go..
More tomorrow.. nite folks.. Nite Sam !
-me