Air Quality Lab Overview

In this lab, you will work in groups to examine how air quality varies across Claremont. To that end, you will use these PocketLab Air (a.k.a. PL Air) sensor units. Each PL Air unit measures:

Ultimately, by working with your groups and incorporating the class’ data, you will develop a lesson plan focused on some aspect of air quality or climate change. This lesson plan will be the lab report for this first class project. Your recommendations will directly inform ongoing community science initiatives at PocketLab such as Blue Sky Zero or Urban Heat Islands.

Week 1 of lab

Our objective in the first week of lab is to:

  • Set up a PocketLab Notebook account
    • Note that the class code is 5ACMNE
    • You will log in as a Student using this class code and your FIRST NAME, SURNAME FIRST INITIAL (e.g. Cecil S. for Cecil Sagehen) as it is displayed in the Pomona Portal (if you would like that updated, please let me know and I can do that)
  • Connect to your group’s PL Air sensor on a computer and record data
  • Upload your group’s mobile phone data as a .csv (comma-separated values spreadsheet file) to the Week 1 data folder.
  • If someone in your group has an Android device, you may consider connecting to your group’s PL Air sensor on a phone and record data. Unfortunately, I do not recommend using the iPhone/iOS app to read in PocketLab Air data.

If you encounter any issues, please let Prof. Chang or the lab TA know ASAP.

Congrats on completing lab for the first week of EA 30!