The (not so) Daily Me: Memphre Experiment at Carderock

Today we got up early and went to Faith Christian School. We then set out for Bethesda, Maryland and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division. The only way that we were able to go was because our teacher Tim Mooney is a former Naval Intelligence Officer, and has friends there. We had to send in the names and birthdates of everyone who was going to go about two weeks ahead of time, so they could do background checks. When we got there, Tobie (sp?), who was helping with the experiment, came out and met us at the guard house and gave us Visitor badges and parking permits. The Visitor badges had this written on the back:

This badge is the property of the U.S. Government and it must be returned to the issuing authority when departing NSWCCD premises. Its unauthorized retention by any other person is unlawful and will make the offender liable to heavy penalty.
18 U.S.C. 499.606 and 701

When we came to the guard post, a guard came out and gave us a perfunctory once over. We drove around looking for a parking space for a while, and finally had to go to another parking lot that was right next to the David Taylor Model Basin. When we came in, we saw a bunch of pictures on the wall representing the chain of command. The first picture was of President Bush, the next of Donald Rumsfeld, and on down to the commander of that facility. We decended to a dungeon of a basement:

and entered a smaller, 120 foot, testing pool:

The experiment that we were doing was towing an Otter model and a Plesiosaur model. We pulled them at different speeds and recorded the wave height. The method of measuring the wave height was two wires in the water. As the water touched higher on the wires, it changed the resistance to the current flowing throught the wires:

and that current went over to the instrument table:

and then was controlled by a regulator of some sort:

and then fed into an advanced oscilloscope:

that could save the data onto a floppy disk in Comma Seperated Values format (I am going to regraph the data and post it later). The whole reason for this experiment, I have neglected to tell you. In Lake Memphremagog (a lake in Quebec and Vermont) there have been many sightings (1,2) of Memphre (1), a Plesiosaur-like creature. One sighting included a measurement of the wave that the creature made. It was one foot high. Detractors have claimed that it was just an otter. This experiment is to show that even with an unrealistically large Otter and a faster speed than the reported 5 mph, it would not create a one foot wave. The same witness reported seeing huge luminous eyes above the water.

The testing basin was 120' x 10'. So the basin was 120 inches wide; that made the center of the basin 60 inches from the side. The sensor stuck out 30 inches from the side, which made it 30 inches from the sensor to the center where the wave was created by the model. Using the inverse sqaure law, we calculated the proportional increase that we needed to make to measure actual wave height at the model. We then scaled up the results to full size model. The Otter was 4:1 and the Plesiosaur was 7:1. Through this all we had a scientist (Tobie) there directing and running the experiment while we basically watched. The wave sizes showed that it undoubtedly was not an Otter and that it probably was a Plesiosaur.

Two other details noted by that witness were that they saw huge luminous eyes (Otters don't have huge luminous eyes) and no countershading. When we ran the otter through, its eyes were underwater but its signature white spots showed.

Jacques Boisvert (1, 2, 3, 4; article about guy eaten by Memphre) is a researcher that is a major authority on Memphre. Tim knows him well and corresponds with him frequently.

The Otter model was a foam model whose belly was filled with lead to give it proper buoyancy. The Plesiosaur had a belly of lead as well, but it was made of wood.

At lunchtime we went to the cafeteria to eat our lunches. On the way we passed through a huge woodworking shop where they built the models to test. We also passed through the David Taylor Model Basin which is a 3/4 mile long testing basin, one of the largest in the world. It was built by Admiral David Taylor before WWII. It is divided into two main parallel canals. On the near side they were running some tests. The far canal was totally covered with tarps because of classified testing going on there. We saw a bit through the gaps in the tarps, but all we could make out in the dark were some featureless blobs of machinery. They change the water in there every five years. In the meantime, they filter the water. Because of the infrequency of the water getting changed, it is very dark in there to make so that algae won't grow. We got to see stuff that non-U.S. citizens would not be allowed to see. Non-U.S. citizens are allowed on-base with strict escort, but not into some the areas that we were allowed into.

Group with the models in lab
Alternate pic