Learning Equipment Supply Service

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/bees/

Bees

This post is for Mike, the beekeeper.  Hello, Mike.  I’m Glen, the guy with the bees in an exterior wall.  This is at our lab / storage location in west Los Angeles (90034).

Here’s an infrared image taken from the roof.  We are looking at the inside face of the exterior parapet wall.  Please notice the vertical post.  I think the bees are just to the right of that post.

Here is a closer shot of that spot just to the right of the vertical post, with a yardstick in the view.  I have marked the hotspot on the wall using a red crayon.  It’s faint, so you might have to zoom in a bit.

Here’s a shot to show how thick the wall is.  The wall is only about five inches thick.

Here is a shot to show how wide the spot might be.

Next is an infrared image of the other side of the wall.  This is the outside face of the wall.  Please notice the outdoor lamp in the center of the image, and use that lamp as a reference to match the infrared image with the video which follows it.

Here’s a video that I took a few weeks ago, showing the bees’ entry point and the exterior wall that they inhabit.  The outdoor lamp in the video is the same lamp that you can see in the center of the infrared image above.

I do not believe that these bees would be accessible from indoors.  Behind the door that you see in the video above, there is a 1000-sq-ft lab/storage space.  Here is an infrared image of the wall an ceiling areas above that same door, from the inside of the unit.  I don’t notice any telltale spots.

Thank you very much for your time Mike.

My vision is to use a single-box deep Langstroth which I am ordering from eBay.  We would like to place the box on the roof, and then to make bee videos for our customers, who are science teachers.

Thank you for your time.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/we-need-a-form-990-for-this-fiscal-year/

we need a form 990 for this fiscal year

I had to look over our cash flow in order to see what kind of COVID19 government assistance we may need.  Surprise, we seem to have taken in more than $50k this fiscal year, so that means we will need to file a form 990 instead of the much simpler form 990N after June.

The form 990 requires a detail accounting of expenses (part IX) and revenue (part VIII) by category, and for the three most expensive projects, by project also (part III).  Then in part X there is a balance sheet.  I don’t know how we will define our non-cash assets on the balance sheet, since at least half of them consist of donated equipment which we salvaged, rather than bought.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/lab-equipment-repair-services/

lab equipment repair services

I have found that at one community college near me, there is a pile of lab equipment in disrepair.  Some of the necessary repairs are very simple.  I would like to use this to fundraise for LESS.

Some Corning hot plates are not working.  They need spare parts:

PC-420 needs top ceramic plate.

PC-420 needs replacement ckt board

PC-310 needs replacement stirrer knob

PC-310 needs replacement ckt board

PC-320 needs replacement ckt board

PC-320 needs replacement ckt board

Some Thermo Fisher hot plates are not working.  I completed a web form and forgot to note the model number after submitting it.

Two spec-21’s from Thermo Fisher are in need of light filter adjustment or replacement.

Three centrifuges need replacement tube holders.  These are the aluminum tubes that hold glass tubes.  The size is like a large test tube, maybe 20mm wide, 100 mm long.  Where can I find such replacements?

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/less-phone-system/

LESS phone system

I have done a little experiment with my Google-Fi phone number.  By adding a call-forwarding number, I can have another phone ring for incoming calls, but my Google-Fi phone also rings.  Both phones ring.

LESS has one phone number.  It is with Google Voice.  Customers sometimes call the number, but nobody answers, and the customer often does not leave a message.  Customers who already know me personally often call my cell phone number instead.  But I seldom answer voice calls on the cell phone.  For voice callers, our services are not good.

The solution, I think, is to convert our current Google Voice number to a Google-Fi number, and to get a compatible used cell phone for it.  I would carry the LESS cell phone to answer customers and prospective customers who prefer voice with a human.  But I would add the phone numbers of any LESS staff member who is willing to field calls, including cold calls.  So all of our phones would ring, and whoever answers first can handle the customer’s questions.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/marine-science-grant-opportunity/

Marine science grant opportunity

https://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/plate/plgrant.html

It’s for up to $50k for K-12 work in marine and coastal change education.  Seems like climate change is an emphasis.  Deadline, 11/4/2019.

We don’t have any current projects which are suitable.  There are already great organizations doing stuff like tidepools-in-a-van, field trips to aquariums.  I’d like to propose a variation on something different, but just as valuable.

Maybe grow your own coral in the classroom?  Takes about a decade:  https://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/how-to-grow-coral/

Maybe 3d-print your own coral models for study in the classroom?  https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Save-Coral-Reefs-Using-3D-Design-and-Printi/

There’s a mobile micro mollusk museum that we could emulate, https://micro.ooo/mollusk​_maybe?  https://micro.ooo/mollusk

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/hacking-the-pasco-glx-battery-pack/

hacking the Pasco GLX battery pack

The technical science staff for Windward School has generously donated to us several Pasco GLX electronic data collection units.  These are awesome handheld units with an above-average set of automated graphing and analytic capabilities. The user interface is retro by now, but the internal capabilities still cannot be beat on the market today.

I must replaced the nickel-metal hydride battery packs.  These are $35 each from Pasco, but I believe I can get them for around 1/5 this price via eBay and Amazon.  The Pasco battery pack contains a thermistor or some such component, and is connected by a 4-conductor JST (Japan Solderless Technology) plug.

Here on the left I have an NiMH pack from eBay.  It has its own JST plug, but the size is a little bigger than the JST receptacle on the Pasco GLX.  I have removed the JST plug from the OEM (original equpiment manufacturer) battery pack, and swapped it with the new pack’s JST plug.  The new pack has two white wires and one red and one black.  I assume the white wires lead to a thermistor in the new pack.

The new pack charges up in the GLX, but the thermistor seems to have different specifications than the OEM pack’s thermistor:  the new pack powers the GLX on, but the GLX gives a message that says the power level is critically low, even though the battery status indicator on the GLX display indicates a full charge.

Just in case the OEM pack contains some type of thermal diode which I don’t know about, I switched the order of the white wires from the new pack going into the JST plug.  Same results.  Therefore, it must be the case that there is a thermistor in the new pack which is of a different specification than the thermistor in the old pack.

Instead of just swapping the JST plug from the OEM pack to the new pack, I will have to swap the thermistor+wires+JST plug assembly.  I will do this in a way that avoids soldering wires directly onto the new pack, i.e. I will preserve the red and black wires which are already on the new pack.  This is because I have some previous experience soldering metal tabs directly on to NiMH battery packs, and in that experience there was a high failure rate with the modified battery packs; I think I had caused thermal damage to the dry cells.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/payroll-for-less/

Payroll for LESS

Neyda, Ilse and Glen are our only paid staff.  So far, Glen has been a volunteer and Ilse and Neyda have been contractors, but now we are bringing all three of them on as real employees.

New Post has been published on https://learnmorewith.us/blog/bid-for-lausd-contract-2/

Bid for LAUSD contract

we submitted our bid today for professional development services to private schools which are served by LAUSD Title IIA funds.The bidding process is a lot of paperwork, and most of the paperwork is not related to descriptions of our proposed services. We had to make four copies of our bid, which was about 40 pages long. Three of those copies had to go into three ring binders, and those binders had to contain tabbed dividers with specifically prescribed labels and titles. We had to round up 6 USB flash drives and each flash drive had to contain exactly the same documents in 12 separate PDF files. Anyways, we managed to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and Glenn personally put the box containing all the required materials for the bid onto the contract manager’s desk at the LAUSD office exactly at 2 p.m. today. The deadline was also exactly 2 pm.Whew!

New Post has been published on https://learnmorewith.us/blog/bid-for-lausd-contract/

Bid for LAUSD contract

we submitted our bid today for professional development services to private schools which are served by LAUSD Title IIA funds.The bidding process is a lot of paperwork, and most of the paperwork is not related to descriptions of our proposed services. We had to make four copies of our bid, which was about 40 pages long. Three of those copies had to go into three ring binders, and those binders had to contain tabbed dividers with specifically prescribed labels and titles. We had to round up 6 USB flash drives and each flash drive had to contain exactly the same documents in 12 separate PDF files. Anyways, we managed to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and Glenn personally put the box containing all the required materials for the bid onto the contract manager’s desk at the LAUSD office exactly at 2 p.m. today. The deadline was also exactly 2 pm.Whew!

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/twenty-spectrophotometers-and-several-hundred-prepared-microscope-slides/

twenty spectrophotometers and several hundred prepared microscope slides

The University of Southern California biological sciences instructional labs have updated their inventory of spectrophotometers this summer.  This has resulted in a large amount of high-value equipment donations to LESS.

We have received twenty working spectrophotometers.  These are mostly Thermo-Fisher Biomate3 models.  There a few Thermo-Fisher Genesys models too, which are capable of automated kinetics studies.

We also received some dissecting microscope parts and compound microscope parts, along with a few dozen class sets of prepared microscope slides.  The prepared slides are classic specimens for education, such as Giardia lamblia.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/equipment-donations-from-local-affluent-private-school/

Equipment donations from local affluent private school

For four years, Glen was a full-time lab technician at a wealthy private school.  Said school is cleaning out its shelves and cabinets of old equipment this summer.   This has resulted in high-value donations to LESS.

Here are just a few items that we have already received this summer:

two Pasco GLX charging banks

twelve working Pasco GLX

five Pasco optics rails with optics accessories

one 50-gallon aquarium with Eheim canister filter

one early model Fluval EVO 13.5-gallon saltwater acrylic aquarium

one 50-gallon reptile terrarium <—Payat (the LESS gecko) will live in here soon.

five working National Instruments MyDAQ units

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/employees-and-banking/

Employees and banking

With the three new customers for next school year, we can afford to hire our 1099 contractors as W-2 employees instead. I anticipate that we will need them in such a way that they would be considered employees rather than contractors, anyways.

Now, to pay the contractors, Glen has been using Zelle Pay from his personal account and getting reimbursed by LESS.  For employees, however, it would be proper to do direct ACH deposits from a LESS account.

Unfortunately, ACH origination services exceed $20/month at our bank.  We could go back to California Credit Union, but the other fees there would add up to give us a similar expense as with our current bank.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/physics-expertise-at-less/

Physics expertise at LESS

LESS needs more physics expertise, but we cannot afford to put a physicist on staff.  Here’s what we do have the ability to do:  we can find training for our current staff.

LESS is about to put Glen through a physics education program at Cal State University, Los Angeles.  It’s going to be a little expensive, but still far cheaper than consulting repeatedly with physics experts, and far better than continuing with our business with the collective level of physics knowledge that we have on staff right now.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/lucy-ambassador/

Lucy Ambassador

Glen of LESS is now a volunteer community presenter for NASA this year.  The position is called “Lucy Ambassador” because my goal will be to present information to the public about the unmanned NASA mission called “Lucy”.  The Lucy spacecraft will travel to some asteroids which revolve around the sun in the same orbit as Jupiter.

LESS will provide telescope loans and other equipment to support my ambassador activities.  The ambassador program goals align with the LESS mission, since I am choosing to make the K-12 population my target audience. The venues for these activities will be public library branch meeting rooms.  I want every presentation to focus on some kind of relevant, hands-on craft or experiment.  That’s going to be difficult.  Maybe the LESS lab technical staff can help.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/todays-fresh-start-charter-school/

Today's Fresh Start Charter School

TFSCS has contracted LESS for lab equipment loans and technical support for the 2019-2020 school year, from September 9 through June 5.

New Post has been published on http://learnmorewith.us/blog/990n-filed-electronically-today/

990N filed electronically today

New Post has been published on https://learnmorewith.us/blog/grant/

Grant