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Sometimes Low-Tech is Best

August 11, 2012

Not every scientific experiment requires expensive equipment. As Hurricane Irene advanced up the East Coast in August 2011, WHOI postdoctoral scientists Pete van Hengstum and Andrea Hawkes and their colelagues in the Coastal Systems Lab used simple items to quickly fashion instruments that could help them study the effects of the storm’s high winds. The device shown here was built out of soda bottles, centrifuge tubes, and duct tape to collect sediment blown into shoreline ponds. Other instruments made of soda bottles, nylon stockings, and pipe clamps collected samples of material blown or washed off nearby beaches. Their data will help reveal how storms re-shape coastlines over time.(Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)