Underwater Experimentation

Hello wonderful people!

This summer has been wonderful so far. I am so glad to have finished classes for a little while and I have enjoyed getting to rest so much. I have time! For things I care about! It is amazing! It has been a while since I’ve had any time to just slow down and intentionally relax and it has been such a blessing to have that time now.

As a fun side project for the summer, I decided a little while back that I wanted to design a way to float my (very much not waterproof) phone underwater so that it could take videos inside of a river. Theoretically I could just buy a go-pro, but that would cost money and I don’t want to spend that. Plus, what’s the point of studying engineering if I can’t use what I’m learning to make weird contraptions?

The result was the HSCV James Cameron (HSCV stands for Homemade Submersible Camera Vessel; James Cameron is a film director who reached Challenger Deep, the deepest known part of the ocean, in his own submarine). It’s an upcycled plastic Great Value peanut jar with the branding removed. It also has a string of twine tied around the lid so that I can reel it in from farther out in the water, and a rubber band around the threads of the lid to create a more effective watertight seal. Simple, but hopefully enough to get the job done. And Saturday was its maiden voyage!

To test the prototype, I took it out to a nearby river in the middle of a rainstorm. The rain had gorged the river, and it rushed wildly through the woods. Since I wasn’t ready to trust such an… um… “budget friendly” setup with my phone just yet— especially not in such violent waters— I put a cardboard square inside of the peanut jar to see how much water made it through the rubber band seal. Then I climbed down the riverbank, untangled the twine, and hurled the HSCV into the river.

The results were better than I could have hoped for! The James Cameron proved durable enough to withstand the roiling river without any damage. It clung to the bank more than I would have liked, but regardless of how tangled in overhanging branches it got I was always able to retrieve it. I was way too happy to see the HSCV working so well (even on such a simple test), so I reeled it in and threw it out several more times just for the fun of it.

The seal proved slightly less durable than I would have hoped, and a few stray drops of water made it inside at the end of each retrieval. By the time I finished my tests there was a tiny pool of water inside the peanut jar. However, given the conditions that the James Cameron was up against on its first round of several tests, I was quite proud of the results.

I am glad we live in a world where I can make silly projects with peanut jars!

Talk to you all later!

Best Wishes,

Ezra Larsen