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Originally Posted by JulianEdgar
Re using other height sensing techniques, I have tried ultrasonic height detection but couldn't get the resolution needed for lift/downforce testing at normal road speeds. So back to a simple P38 Range Rover analog pot-based sensor. I think my latest smoothing circuit is better than the one in my Veloce book, and seemed to work really well on the Impreza rear wing / spoiler tests.
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I'll probably end up going this route; I looked up other height sensors and most of them can be had much more cheaply than the Prius arm, for some reason (maybe because they aren't very prolific?). Thanks for the advice on the ultrasonic sensor; too bad, because TI makes one that could be logged directly on my calculator.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianEdgar
So keep testing - it certainly takes time and effort, but it's also like taking off a blindfold and seeing the world for the first time.
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Very much so. I've spent the last two years in calculus, physics, and engineering coursework, and it's the same sort of experience--especially physics labs pre-pandemic, where experiencing physical phenomena is worth 1000 times more than reading about them in books. One professor had us do a weekly write-up on important physicists of the past; one week I chose Emilie de Chatelet, a mistress of Voltaire who demonstrated (in the early 1700s, mind you) that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity by
dropping balls into sand and measuring how far they penetrated. I imagine a lot of people today would poo-poo that sort of experiment as low-tech and uncontrolled, yet it was instrumental to our current understanding of physics.