Space Weather Underground - AGU100 Poster, Fall Meeting

Here is a copy of our poster from the Fall Meeting at AGU. Abstract:  UNH has formed a collaborative research and education venture with seven local high schools.  Students are building SAM-III fluxgate magnetometers.  In the process, students are learning both analog and digital electronics, circuit construction, and core physics from electromagnetism.  The magnetometers will be used for demonstration purposes in the schools and as elements in a distributed array that will be coordinated for the purpose of performing space physics research in the New Hampshire area.  Geomagnetic variations at ground level are caused by electric currents 100 km overhead.  The measurement of spatial and temporal variability in the ground level fluctuations provides important clues to ionospheric dynamics that can be correlated with spacecraft data.  While the construction of the magnetometers is documented, deployment of the instruments constitutes problems in power and data handling that are unsolved engineering problems that the teams must tackle.  Several working magnetometers already exist and there are different approaches underway to solve the power and data handling problems.  When completed, the array will permit advanced scientific research into ionospheric dynamics that will continue to involve the students and schools that built the array.