All posts by Matt

Track meet registration system

I developed a track meet registration system for a Seattle-area middle-school league. League administrators can authorize coach access, create meet event listings, and print athlete tags. Coaches can create team rosters and register athletes for their events. It runs on Google App Engine. If someone’s interested in using it, I can make the code available.

GetBook.py

Update (20 Feb 2014): It looks like the Maxwell Institute changed their website and the script no longer works. It’s fixable, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to it. The code is available here. A Python script to generate epub ebooks from the books made available online by the Neal A. … Continue … Continue reading GetBook.py

A device to measure picoradians

The science data for our torsion-balance experiments is collected by measuring the rotation of the pendulum using laser autocollimators. In these autocollimators, light from a laser diode is collimated by a lens, reflected off a mirror on the pendulum, refocused by the original collimating lens, and directed onto a position-sensitive photodetector by a … Continue … Continue reading A device to measure picoradians

Low-energy electron gun

As an offshoot of our torsion-balance experiments, our group was involved in technology development for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, a proposed three-spacecraft space mission to detect gravity waves. These spacecraft were to stay in a perfect free-fall orbit by tracking a free-floating “test mass” contained within each spacecraft. We were investigating the … Continue … Continue reading Low-energy electron gun