How to make a filter like that in movie: Apollo 13?
Question by LuvU: How to make a filter like that in movie: Apollo 13?
Please help! Need steps to made a similar filter used in the movie.
Best answer:
Answer by startrekfan4ever
http://www.ghg.net/woodfill/Apollo_13_CO2_filter.htm
Materials: Roll of 1 inch wide masking tape, Hair Blower, Plastic Turkey Oven Bags,
8 ½” by 11” card stock, cloth fabric, roll of garden weed mesh, discarded shoe (or any other similar) box, discarded garden hose, scissors. All the items (except for garden mesh, hose and box) are likely available at a hardware or grocery store. Hand held hair dryers are always available at home.
Instructions:
Examine the above photos for clues about fashioning your version of the Apollo 13 “jury-rig” filter from the list of materials.
Read the air-ground instructions given the Apollo 13 astronauts for added information about making your filter. They are listed below.
Using the instructions, pictures, and materials build a square filter with a configuration which plumbs air from the blow dryer through the hose and ultimately the filter without leaking.
DANGER: BE CAREFUL
ATTENTION: Be sure to select the warm rather than hot setting for the blower when you switch on the hair dryer. Use your hand to test whether your design and finished approach is “air-tight”.
Examine the photos above. What improvement is evident in the photo at the right of the improved version made by the Apollo 13 crew? The left photo shows the original version built by the crew from the instructions radioed by mission control, then constructed by the astronauts.
For the Instructor:
The sides of the shoe (or similar) box serve as the frame/structure of the filter. Cut out the center bottom of the show box after removing the shoe box lid. Cut the plastic weed screen to cover the top open end of the shoe box, then attach the mesh using masking tape around the top of the shoe box holding the mesh taunt and taping the mesh to the sides of the box as you might wrap a gift. [The mesh serves as the filtering material. Explain to the students the principle involved, i.e., having contaminated air pass through the fine mesh as though it is LiOH crystals for removing CO2 from the cabin atmosphere. Explain the purpose of the blower being a substitute for the Apollo 13 suit fan.]
Have the students construct both the square the filter as well as the modified apparatus. Their device would have enabled the Apollo 13 crew to avoid using the round lander filters in the barrel-like containers shown in the above right photo.
Also, have the students fashion the means for conducting the dryer’s air flow through the garden hose into their filter system. [Prior to class, you will need to cut the garden hose into one – two foot lengths.] Note the version the ground controllers built and the later improved version built by the Apollo 13 astronauts differ. Likewise, will student’s designs and finished products differ. Have a selected team of students evaluate the completed devices and give reasons for strengths and weaknesses of each.
Lastly: Simply provide this description of the activity to the students and have them draw, explain, or write a narrative description of how to build their square filter apparatus without actually constructing it. Let them pretend they are mission control instructing the Apollo 13 crew via radio in a step-by-step procedures how it is done. Then, ask a separate team of students to copy down the instructions and attempt to assemble (draw) the filter as did the Apollo 13 astronauts without having a picture or photo of it. (This is certainly the least involved of the approaches. No materials required other than imagination and ingenuity.)
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