Bringing the Sun Down to Earth: Designing Inexpensive Instruments for Monitoring the Atmosphere

In 1998, my colleague, Forrest Mims, and I began a project to develop inexpensive handheld atmosphere monitoring instruments for the GLOBE Program, an international environmental science and education program that began its operations on Earth Day, 1995. GLOBE’s goal was to involve students, teachers, and scientists around the world in authentic partn- ships in which scientists would develop instrumentation and experimental prools suitable for student use. In return, data collected by stude...