The Lion's Roundtable (Guest: Gerard Blanchard)
Download MP3Good day. Good day. This is Amber Narro on ninety point nine FM, The Lion. I'm at the Roundtable with my friend, doctor Gerard Blanchard. He's gonna tell us about roomie 11.
Amber Narro:11? Roomie. There's 11 roomies?
Gerard Blanchard:There's 11 roomies. We've been doing it for eight years now and three years we had two projects going. This this year I had six students working with me.
Amber Narro:So what is, like, 11 roomies. I thought we only had one here at Southeastern. What is this 11 roomie thing? What is happening?
Gerard Blanchard:Roomie is or the instruments that we build. We call them the remote observers of many interesting events. Ah. Very cool. But that's that's a backronym.
Gerard Blanchard:Yes. We had roomie first.
Amber Narro:Backed it in there, I love it.
Gerard Blanchard:Backed it in there. Are, roomies are instruments that my students build, they take about a year to do it, and then we go to NASA facilities and they launch them on NASA vehicles. It could be something as small as a weather balloon, a six foot balloon, or it could be a rocket, a sounding rocket that goes 72 miles into space, or Room 11 is actually going to fly on a high altitude balloon, which is a balloon about the size of a football stadium, it's 10,000,000 cubic feet, so it fill up a football stadium, and what's carried underneath that balloon is the size of a small car, so of a thousand equipment, and so this particular payload is called the High Altitude Student Platform, and it's a NASA project, and last September they put out a call for student teams to propose putting an instrument on there, and they made their selections, and they've been working with us, they work to make sure that things will work, give suggestions for improvements, find hazards and things like that, so they work with us, and my students, they completed their instrument, We will be going to Palestine, Texas, which is where NASA has its Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.
Gerard Blanchard:That's where NASA puts together all of its balloon payloads. They do several balloon payloads a year. NASA does a lot of science on balloons because it's a lot cheaper than rockets.
Amber Narro:Right. Now Doctor. Blanchard, you are a physics professor here at I am physics professor. And have been teaching here how long?
Gerard Blanchard:Twenty eight years I just finished.
Amber Narro:Fantastic. You've also served as department head
Gerard Blanchard:as well? Did. That was thirteen years.
Amber Narro:Indeed. And also been working with these students for some of those years where you served as department head, if I'm correct.
Gerard Blanchard:No. Is this is my the the third age of my of my southeastern career.
Amber Narro:Okay. So Rumi started after department head.
Gerard Blanchard:After department head.
Amber Narro:Okay. Very good. Very good. So this is a project that you take on and this is huge. And just for for our our public to understand, department head is a big load here at Southeastern.
Amber Narro:Is it is faculty. It is student. Management area here where you're taking care of the the needs of our university as a whole while also serving our students. So it is a tightrope to walk on, but it is also a lot of time and energy. And a lot of professors, after they if they do a stint as department head, it they retire after this is over with or go back into the classroom and and and maybe do a little bit of research and kinda get back in touch with their students, and that's exactly what you've done after leaving department head position, gone back into the classroom, and kinda reinvested that time in your students.
Amber Narro:And thank you for that, number one, and and continuing that because that's what we do. That's why we get into this, this research area. Right? Yeah. And you have moved back into that place where you fell in love with teaching and and being with students again.
Amber Narro:So we appreciate that of you here at Southeastern, the time that you served as department heads, serving the university as a whole as well as our students, and now reinvesting that time in our students and getting publications and putting them into places where they can really articulate their experience here, go to grad school. Let's talk about what some of your students have done because of this project and then we'll back into the project again and chat about it specifically and why students should be excited about participating in this.
Gerard Blanchard:Well, I always say that this project turns students into professionals.
Amber Narro:I've heard you say that before.
Gerard Blanchard:Had one of my current students, he's a current student, but he's working outside of Southeastern, and he had to write a report for his boss, and he came back and he says, my boss told me that this report was so professional, and he was proud of that.
Amber Narro:Yeah.
Gerard Blanchard:And Other students, I have one student, Cassandra Saxon, she's going to graduate school now.
Amber Narro:She's out of state, she's
Gerard Blanchard:She's in Illinois. Yes. She's in Illinois, and she is gonna work with Fermilab. Fermilab is the National Research Facility, National Particle Research Facility, and that's where she's gonna be doing her research as as a graduate student.
Amber Narro:Very cool. Is she getting funding?
Gerard Blanchard:Oh, yes.
Amber Narro:Very good. That's what I wanted to hear. And that's important for students here, for our listening audience. When they go into graduate school, one of the things that we really kinda challenge them to do, and hopefully all universities challenge their students to do, is find a place where they're gonna get funded to go. Meaning, they're gonna work in labs so that their school is paid for and that they maybe even get, like, a little stipend or something so that they have living expenses because we certainly don't want our students graduating with a ton of debt.
Amber Narro:Right? And Cassandra Saxon, she's gonna kind of been laser focused in this physics area for a really long time. She was an honor student. She did her honors thesis with Southeastern as well, graduated with her diploma, and is now working out of state doing some graduate research, and it all kinda started with the Rumi project, right?
Gerard Blanchard:It did, yeah. So we worked together for a long time, probably from our sophomore year.
Amber Narro:Yeah.
Gerard Blanchard:Several years in a row.
Amber Narro:Very good. Anybody else you wanna chat about? Oh. I know, 13, and I'm putting this question to you on the spot, and you're like, oh my gosh, so many, which one do I choose?
Gerard Blanchard:Oh, Leah Dahlia, she's in Maryland, she's doing medical physics, So is Kara Kara
Amber Narro:It'll come up with me. Absolutely. I put him on the spot, totally put him on the spot looking for students over the last 13 or 11 projects so far. 13 already already initiated, absolutely, but yeah.
Gerard Blanchard:She's in medical physics as well, and and she's loving it. She she's putting her her mechanical skills that she's learned to work, and she was really nervous at first about graduate school, but after her first semester, actually, the funny thing is, she was worried about whether she belonged in graduate school, but she didn't know that the graduate school actually wrote me said, Barbier. They said, you you recommended the student Cara Barbier to us. Can you send us more like her?
Amber Narro:There you go. There you go. That is wonderful. I appreciate that. The school has now reached out to you and said, send me more.
Gerard Blanchard:Send send us more. Yes.
Amber Narro:I love it. And don't you love that stamp that that puts on this university as well as your program and what you're doing? I mean, I I know I know that I know your heart, Gerard. Like, I know that you love your students and you love what you're doing, but it's gotta be self fulfilling and just so gratifying when these individuals call you, and you can know that you're super proud of what you've been pouring into them.
Gerard Blanchard:Oh, yeah. I love my students.
Amber Narro:Indeed. Alright. So what is this roomy thing? What have you been do what are you finding when you send these things up? I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna ask all the stupid questions today because I'm not a physicist, so tell me what's happening.
Gerard Blanchard:Well, roomy 11 is basically an infrared thermometer. It's going up into space and it's looking down on the earth's atmosphere from above and we're taking the temperature of the atmosphere. So, we're not, I mean, that's important. We have to keep track of that.
Amber Narro:What do need that for?
Gerard Blanchard:To understand climate change and things like that.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Gerard Blanchard:But we go beyond that. We actually have different filters, infrared filters on there, so it's like different colors. The different frequencies of visible light are different colors, while there are different frequencies of infrared, and we have filters to look at different colors.
Amber Narro:Does that mean different temperatures? The different colors? What do the colors mean?
Gerard Blanchard:Well, wavelengths of light, different frequencies of light, are emitted by different parts of the atmosphere. So, vapor in the atmosphere will absorb infrared light and re radiate at a particular wavelength,
Amber Narro:Okay.
Gerard Blanchard:And carbon dioxide in the air will absorb and emit at a particular wavelength. And ozone in the air will absorb and emit at a particular wavelength. So we break up all of the light that's coming from the earth into these bands so that we can tell how much of the heat from the earth is coming from water vapor and how much is coming from carbon dioxide, how much is coming from ozone, how much is coming from the surface of the earth itself. So there are regions where we can look straight through the atmosphere and the atmosphere is clear, and then there are other wavelengths where it's not, it's opaque, like where there's, at the wavelengths where water vapor absorbs, the light doesn't get through, so it's opaque, but in other wavelengths it's clear, so we can see different things going on, we're looking at different parts of the atmosphere.
Amber Narro:And are you just looking for change, or is some of that good versus bad, tell me what that means We for
Gerard Blanchard:are things over time and over space.
Amber Narro:Okay. Have you even noticed changes as you've gone through the Rumi projects, like just in the last eleven years?
Gerard Blanchard:I can't say that we have. We're still developing the instrument. This instrument, we have flown, this is our third iteration of it, and it's getting better every time.
Amber Narro:I've seen it. It's a little tiny thing, and now you're talking about big balloons that are carrying thousands Our of
Gerard Blanchard:own instrument, well, the ones that you saw before were about a pound. We were limited to a pound. Now we have three pounds, so it's It's gotten bigger, and the first couple times we did it, there was a lot of noise in the measurements.
Amber Narro:I remember that.
Gerard Blanchard:We couldn't tell much about what was going on in the different wavelengths, but actually what we've done now is it's the same instrument, but we've changed our math. We've changed our data analysis, and we're doing much better. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things come out this year. And whatever we learn from this year, we're actually going do it again. We already have a plan to take what we learn in September, August or September is when it will fly, so September, October we'll be analyzing the data and then making plans for next year.
Amber Narro:Indeed. How is this funded? How do you get the project rolling so that Southeastern students can participate?
Gerard Blanchard:This is funded ultimately through NASA. You've heard of land grant universities. There's also sea grant for ocean research. There's also space grant, which is money that's given to NASA, and then given to all 50 states, and then those 50 states pass it on to us.
Amber Narro:So excuse me, community, we are a space grant.
Gerard Blanchard:We are a space grant institution. Institution. Love it.
Amber Narro:Love it.
Gerard Blanchard:We are a member of the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium.
Amber Narro:Very good. And that's powerful for us as a university. Are other universities in the state participating in this?
Gerard Blanchard:Yes. Yes. Some more than others. The more proposals you submit, the more money you get. The number of proposals at Southeastern has actually been going up.
Gerard Blanchard:I think we had like five funded proposals this year, up from almost none.
Amber Narro:Do you know about the other ones that have been submitted?
Gerard Blanchard:Most of them are in the Department of Industrial Engineering Technology, there's a couple of senior design grants, and a couple of, undergraduate research grants.
Amber Narro:Can't wait to talk to those guys. So Yeah. And I'm I mean that with, you know, I talked to you before the show and told you that it's kinda your fault that I've started talking to professors again and really kinda getting dug into that. This show was on the air at KSLU for many years, many decades, really. And a couple of years ago when Ida came through and kind of hurt our radio station here, we moved the the show over to North Shore Broadcasting for three years while we rebuilt the studio and made sure that we could go live and talk to people in the community at that time.
Amber Narro:Now given the opportunity to go back live here at KSLU, we moved the show back over here and now I've gotta kind of get my get my professor parade started again. And you reminded me of that just a few weeks ago and kinda put that challenge back on me to talk to to kinda bring that research back to the community and share what we're doing. And that's definitely an initiative that I embrace as as somebody in academics here at South Eastern, but also it's so interesting to see some of the things that we're doing and to celebrate them. Right here at South Eastern, we have space research going on and we're we're sending things into space. You're actually sending this instrument into the air.
Amber Narro:Yes? Talk to me about that.
Gerard Blanchard:Into the air, not quite into space. We'll be going it it will be going up a 120,000 feet, which is, what, 30 miles or so. Space actually starts at 60 miles high. So instruments that we put on the rocket did actually go into space. They went up about 70 miles.
Gerard Blanchard:Yeah. This will be, it'll be halfway to space, but if you talk about the atmosphere, it'll be above 99% of the atmosphere.
Amber Narro:Right.
Gerard Blanchard:So, will be, will be, in effect, above the atmosphere, but not into space. Technically. Technically.
Amber Narro:Right? But I'll claim it anyway. We're gonna do that. So we're definitely sending things up into the air for sure. And we're doing research in space for We are.
Amber Narro:In Yes. In the space, you know. So we were there and we're we're participating in that right here from Hammond America. You guys have had some celebrations around this as well. Also gone into, if I'm remembering correctly, for the y'all y'all send it up here, but also gone to Texas, and that was during one of the eclipse, reminding me.
Gerard Blanchard:We we usually go to Texas Yes. Be because because of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. During the pandemic, we couldn't go, so we were staying in Louisiana during the pandemic, and for a few years afterwards. Normally we go to Texas. We did go to Texas for the eclipse, that was awesome.
Gerard Blanchard:We actually got a paper out of that. We did the spectrum of the sun, how the color of the spectrum of the sun
Amber Narro:Which means that you're in a research journal for this.
Gerard Blanchard:Actually that paper was written by a student. The first time I've ever had a student co author in twenty eight years.
Amber Narro:Amazing. Which means for them when they're going to graduate school, for those who are listening, it goes to these have to be refereed by other professionals, other, physics professors more than likely as well and very, you know, renowned, respected professors of the area and they say that this is, or in this in this discipline, I should say, and they say that this is good enough to be published in a research journal and that does a ton for this student when they're going on for research opportunities up to and including even when they go and possibly become a professor themselves. Yes?
Gerard Blanchard:Yes.
Amber Narro:Indeed. Love that. So, that is that's a wonderful thing for them to articulate for graduate school. Thank you for doing that for our students.
Gerard Blanchard:Of course.
Amber Narro:For sure. The the Rumi project also, you you've got a story that goes with that, with chasing this, instrument. Tell me that story again for our listeners. It's my favorite one. I love it.
Gerard Blanchard:Oh, well that's our smaller balloons and the payloads. We launch them ourselves, well I say we, it's actually a group of universities around Louisiana, so we all get together and about six different universities get together, and we put them all on the same balloon, and we launch this balloon, and it has a radio with it, and we're listening to it, and it's sending us its position, so we follow it around either West Louisiana or East Texas, and well, it goes up about 100,000 feet, and then either the balloon bursts or it cuts itself loose and it parachutes back and it's drifting with the wind, so we're following it on the radio with our maps and we drive around and try to anticipate where it's gonna be. I've actually twice seen the parachute coming down. Love it. That's good because otherwise it can be hard to find.
Amber Narro:Yeah. And you guys send these things up with SD cards, if I'm remembering correctly. So they're collecting information. You've gotta go find it. You have to go find the instrument to collect what it got.
Amber Narro:Yes.
Gerard Blanchard:Yeah. That's right. We're not getting data over the radio, just disposition. So so, yes, to get our data, we have to find it and and take out the little SD card Mhmm. And and analyze the data.
Amber Narro:Love that. Love that. Well, you before the show started, I also was saying, what was going on in your life? What's happening? You're a beekeeper.
Gerard Blanchard:I am.
Amber Narro:I didn't know that. So tell me about this beekeeping thing. You said that we've had a good season so far. Yes? That's good for us to know.
Gerard Blanchard:Yes. Yes. They pulled in a lot of nectar, filled up a couple of supers.
Amber Narro:What's a super?
Gerard Blanchard:A Langsroth beehive consists of boxes, just an empty box, an empty wooden box, and inside the wooden box you put frames, the bees build their comb on the frames, and they're framed so that you can lift them out. You can lift them out and inspect them. And you give the queen two of these boxes herself. So that's where she lays her brood, that's where they have food and pollen for the larvae, and that's the queen's house. And then on top of that
Amber Narro:My house is the queen's house too.
Gerard Blanchard:Any boxes that you put on top of that are called supers, and those are the ones that you can harvest. So, you give them enough food for themselves, and you put the boxes on top to harvest. You have to be careful because if they fill them up, then they run out of space and the queen swarms. She'll take half the hive with her and she'll go build another hive somewhere else.
Amber Narro:She'll show you. And
Gerard Blanchard:then the bees that are left will raise a new queen, but since there's less bees, it's less productive, so if you want to harvest honey, you have to balance giving them space and not taking, making sure they have space, so make sure they don't have too much honey in their hive, they're not honey bound, but also not taking too much honey. You want to give them enough, because that's their food. Yeah. So, it's a balance, we harvested one of the hives and got three gallons in a quart out of that.
Amber Narro:That's amazing. So, you got the big suit and everything?
Gerard Blanchard:Yes.
Amber Narro:I feel like you have to have a suit.
Gerard Blanchard:Right? Yeah.
Amber Narro:What do your neighbors think about this?
Gerard Blanchard:I give them honey. So they're they're
Amber Narro:They're good with it.
Gerard Blanchard:They're in front
Amber Narro:of I So love and the reason why I asked that is because you're not on a big farm, but you have a you have a hive. This is something that you're interested in, and people can do this. I mean, can you do it, like, in in just a small space, or do you need to have a big place kind of away from your house?
Gerard Blanchard:It's it's in our backyard. You have to be 25 feet away from the property lines.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Gerard Blanchard:No, anyone can put a hive in their backyard.
Amber Narro:Very cool. Just 25 feet away.
Gerard Blanchard:25 feet away from the property line. That's so that when the bees fly, they're high enough that they're not flying into people.
Amber Narro:Yeah, oh I love that. I love that.
Gerard Blanchard:I've learned a lot. I've only had these bees for a little over a year. Okay. But, I've learned so much. It's kinda like caring for a kid.
Amber Narro:I want a beehive. I feel like I want a You can do it. I'm scared, though. You know? Like, have you been have you been stung?
Gerard Blanchard:I've been stung about four times Okay. In the past year.
Amber Narro:Oh, did you say ugly words when that happened? Because I feel like I'll be dropping ugly It's
Gerard Blanchard:that It's not that bad.
Amber Narro:I'd have to I'd have to really be with myself and and be cognizant of my mouth if I did that.
Gerard Blanchard:No, I've been in the middle of thousands of bees flying around, and mostly they're minding their own business. One time I got stung because I accidentally put my hand on one of them.
Amber Narro:Okay, so that one was your fault?
Gerard Blanchard:That was my fault.
Amber Narro:Alright, could live with my fault. Mad at myself. A couple
Gerard Blanchard:of times I got stung because they didn't want me around, but mostly mostly they're they're just minding their own business. They they just wanna gather honey and make their hive.
Amber Narro:So you're pretty but the the suit takes care of most of that. Yes?
Gerard Blanchard:The suit takes care of most of that.
Amber Narro:Yeah. You're in
Gerard Blanchard:good As long as they don't get inside.
Amber Narro:Right. Right. Love it. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. I appreciate you letting me kinda dig into your personal life a little bit there with the honey because I one of the things that we thank you for doing that too because we hear lots of times that bee keep that we don't have enough bees and things like that.
Amber Narro:So it's very it's it's encouraging to me that you've had a good harvest because I feel like that means that we have good amount of bees
Gerard Blanchard:around here, maybe? We have a good amount of flowers.
Amber Narro:Yeah. Okay. Good.
Gerard Blanchard:Good amount.
Amber Narro:Which means that that's good because that I think that that's the circle of life. Right? They're dropping the seeds and things like that, and then you go get the flowers and then they come back. So good. Excellent.
Amber Narro:I I feel encouraged by this. That's wonderful. Fantastic. So you're talking about the next couple of years of Rumi. We're gonna we're gonna end on Rumi here.
Amber Narro:This is the instrument that you're building. Have sent it up into the air. We're getting we're we're in the space space, so I'm excited about that. Where what are we doing over the next couple of years and what can you see over the next few years coming out? You're still a young man.
Amber Narro:We're keeping you for a while. I know you've been here for a long time, but you are a young man, so we're hanging on to you. What do you see over the next couple of years while you're what is your big dream for Rumi?
Gerard Blanchard:Well, my dream is eventually put this on a small satellite, but that is a long process, and young I might be, but I am facing retirement.
Amber Narro:Not happening. I'm not allowing it. We're not talking So, about
Gerard Blanchard:it's a race. It's a race between those two. It's a long, long, long, long, long process to put a satellite up, but that's where I would like to go. Very cool. Once again, there are programs for that, too.
Gerard Blanchard:There are NASA programs for small satellites, so we'll see about that.
Amber Narro:We'll pray about that for you. So we're gonna see if we can get that up there. That sounds great. Room E 12, Room E 13, what's the difference between those two and what you're doing now? Is it a continuation on?
Amber Narro:What's the thought process as you're proposing these?
Gerard Blanchard:Well, Room E 13 will be a continuation of Room E 11, we're gonna take this instrument and what we learn, build it better. Room is part of the teaching version of this. Okay. Those students, they'll actually be studying sunlight and how the atmosphere changes sunlight. So the color of the sun changes as it passes through the atmosphere, and that's what they're gonna be measuring.
Gerard Blanchard:They're gonna be building an instrument that'll measure that, a spectrometer.
Amber Narro:Okay, Very cool. So you've got some things in there that just kinda teach the students how to do things, and then others that measure why things are happening, I'm hearing.
Gerard Blanchard:Yeah. So we have our teaching experiments, then we have our research experiments.
Amber Narro:Love it. That's fantastic. Thank you for bringing that to Southeastern. We appreciate everything that you're doing here. Oh my goodness.
Amber Narro:Truly, truly. That it's it's it's an effort to put Southeastern even more so on the map as well as just celebrate our students. I know that it's something that is very gratifying for you to see our students built up, have other universities contacting us for our people. Wow. Wow.
Amber Narro:Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I know that our university as a whole does as well.
Gerard Blanchard:Well, I enjoy it too.
Amber Narro:I know. I know. I can see it all over your face. I've been here talking with Doctor. Gerard Blanchard.
Amber Narro:He is one of our physics professors here at Southeastern doing some amazing work with our students here and and prepping them for graduate school and beyond, making professionals out of our students, turning them into professionals. So we appreciate everything that he does here at Southeastern. Please come back and let's talk Rumi again.
Gerard Blanchard:Of course. And thank you, Amber.
Amber Narro:Yeah. Bring you a couple students too and let them chat about their projects the next time we're here. I know that they're not here during the summer, but we'll we'll definitely grab them for next time and let them share what they've learned for you and celebrate this project as it deserves. So thank you so much and thank you for listening here at KSLU on 90.9. I'm Amber Narro.
Amber Narro:We've been at the Lion's Roundtable today with doctor Gerard Blanchard and he's gonna come back and share Roomie with us soon. Y'all listen again. Have a great day.
