Cabinets of Wonder — Professor Emily Conrad
Hurricane in a Box Diorama
Moving quickly because of the single week nature of the build, I started by getting a mirrored acrylic box. I knew I would have to cut holes into the side, but wanted to avoid wasting my time making any mistakes cutting the acrylic.
The next piece I knew I needed were misters. I ordered a pack of four. Initially I thought about controlling their output via pwm, but as I had them on the desk and began to test, this seemed unrealistic. David Rios mentioned a history of struggle to control these devices.
Initially, I had planned to use a 20mm fan and circle them around to create the vortex. This was until I read this fantastic article hosted on weather.gov. I decided to go with this approach, cutting holes into the side of the box and using the fan to create negative pressure, the inflow of air in compensating would create the vortex.
I was a little worried because tornados don't work this way, but as I researched, it turns out hurricanes do! Warm wet air floats up and cold air rushes in to replace it. This is close enough to the diorama I was creating. Although not perfectly accurate, I believe the purpose of the physical demonstration is to make people engaged and begin to wonder. Some beauty must be created first to open people's minds to learning.
The first day of making I ran into a hurdle, the tornado was not forming. I tried using a larger fan, which helped a little. Ultimately, the tornado would begin to form on the bottom of the diorama but resolve into chaos half way up. When I slept on the problem, I realized that I would need to bring the air vents up the rest of the box to allow more air to flow in.
The next day, I cut larger holes and assembled a top case out of milky acrylic. Racing before class, I tuned in the hole the fan sucked air through, necking it down, and got a quick UV print done to better instruct the users interaction. I feel just a tornado is not enough, I want the viewer to be an engaged part of the process of its creation, even if only turning a knob
