2011 experiments
The following teams of postgraduate students flew their experiments during the 'Fly Your Thesis!' 2011 campaign.
- ARID - Two students from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands investigated the interactions between soil particles to study the water repellency of top soils at an intermediate scale. The results could link the molecular-level and landscape-level understandings of water repellency, and improve understanding of the effects of forest fires and desertification on the repellence of water by soil.
- GRAPPA - Four students from the University of Leicester, UK investigated a condensation mechanism for non-ideal kinetic gases of varying temperature, and its relevance to the formation of planets and rubble pile asteroids in the early Solar System.
- QNEM & nanos on board! - Four students from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium investigated the thermal diffusivity and conductivity of nanofluids – conventional liquids containing suspended particles ranging in size from a few nanometres to 200 nanometres. This could lead to significant improvements in heat transfer devices.
- Supermassive B - Four students from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France studied the production of dust resulting from asteroid collisions in late debris disks. High speed video of the collision between a sphere of planetary dust simulant and a steel ball was captured. The main goal of this research is to obtain new data to improve the current models of asteroid collision simulations.
