Scientific Research, Books, Articles, Columns, Lectures and Photographs
Welcome Thanks for visiting. Please also visit www.sunandsky.org to see some of my science. Follow my science at twitter.com/fmims. Check out The Citizen Scientist (which I edit) at www.sas.org/tcs.
News I'm back from 11 days of calibrating atmospheric instruments at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory. This trip included the driest day I've ever measured. On 2 May, the total column water vapor fell to 0.2 mm at one point. It fell to 0.1 mm and below at the summit of Mauna Kea!
The latest Hawaii trip concludes 17 years of at least annual Mauna Loa calibrations. After returning from Hawaii I analyzed all 10 years of Langley calibration data for the only Microtops II sun photometer equipped with LEDs as spectrally selective photodiodes instead of filtered photodiodes. As with previous multi-year time series from MLO using my earlier LED sun photometers, this 10-year study affirms the long-term stability of an LED sun photometer.
Discover Magazine has named 10 amateur scientists to its list of "50 Best Brains in Science," including my colleagues Ely Silk, Bill Hilton Jr. and me from the Society for Amateur Scientists.
The 40 others include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, physicist Stephen Hawking, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, global warming modeler James Hansen, sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PBS Nova host Neil deGrasse Tyson and Harold Varmus of the National Institutes of Health.
Newest Photos Check out some of the fisheye sky photos at my observation site in South Texas from a series begun in 2000 (scroll down this page). See more photos on my Facebook page, including the Texas Academy of Science facebook page.
Newest Book Fifty Years of Monitoring a Changing Atmosphere: The Story of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory is now complete. This 265,000-word book was written under contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from December 2006 to October 2008 and has been extensively revised and expanded following three rounds of reviews by a 25-member panel of scientists and former Mauna Loa Observatory staff. It is anticipated that the book will be published in 2009 by the University of Hawaii Press, where the manuscript recently received favorable reviews from two independent readers. The preliminary back cover reads:
In 1948 Weather Bureau scientist Dr. Robert Simpson dreamed of an observatory atop the world’s largest mountain, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa. After a humble beginning in 1952 as a tiny weather station perched atop the world’s biggest mountain, science at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory began in earnest when a small concrete block building was dedicated a few thousand feet down the slope in 1956. During the half century since, the Mauna Loa Observatory has earned a reputation as one of the world’s leading scientific stations for monitoring the atmosphere. It’s measurements of carbon dioxide, the ozone layer and sunlight go back more than 50 years. This book is the story of how those and many other measurements were begun and the adventures of the men and women who made them possible.
Forrest M. Mims III is a best selling electronics and science writer. He has calibrated many instruments of his own design at the Mauna Loa Observatory every year since 1992.
Newest YouTube Clips The San Antonio chapter of the American Chemical Society asked me to give the keynote talk at their student awards banquet on 21 May 2009. They recorded around two-thirds of the talk using a handheld video camera, and posted it in three segments on YouTube, which are linked below (scroll to the end of this page).
Check out my new video clip of a rat snake striking my camera (and hand!) after causing the hawk that captured it to crash 50 feet away from where I was standing. (An Australian TV production company has asked permission to use this clip in a documentary.) Also see more about Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory. Go to YouTube and enter "fmims" in the search box.
The ALTAIR 8800 Introduced the Personal Computer Era See the Biography page for a photo of my Albuquerque workbench where circuits were built that led to the founding of MITS, Inc., the company that introduced the Altair 8800 microcomputer in 1975. The Altair was developed by Ed Roberts with help from William Yates. I wrote the operator's manual. (More photos of the workbench are at www.sunandsky.org until they can be moved here.)
Paul Allen and Bill Gates moved to Albuquerque to develop software for the MITS Altair. There they formed Microsoft. Allen and Gates are the principal funders of STARTUP: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution, a permanent exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science that opened 18 November 2006. Minnie and I attended the STARTUP opening events and spent quality time with Ed Roberts, the former president of MITS. See photo of MITS founders Ed Roberts, Bob Zaller and me and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen here.
Science at Geronimo Creek Observatory See my hypothesis concerning the association of UV-B and avian influenza (bird flu) in Southeast Asia published in Environmental Health Perspectives. The Seguin USDA UV-B site will have 5 years of data in March 2009. My sun and sky observation site here at the field I call Geronimo Creek Observatory will have 20 years of data on 04 February 2010.
Daughter Sarah Mims is still featured in a NASA exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Sarah won a 2005 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award for her discovery of living fungal spores and bacteria arriving in Texas from Yucatan. Sarah has also been featured in a NASA web site, various magazines and the book Makers.
I've recently devised a new way to measure total column water vapor and two ways to measure the optical depth of the atmosphere without using a sun photometer. Details will follow in a scientific paper.
My Radio Shack Sun & Sky Monitoring Station has now been used to monitor optical depth (haze), column water vapor and photosynthetic radiation at solar noon for more than 5.5 years. It has also been calibrated (Langley method) each year at the Mauna Loa Observatory. The results show that this simple instrument is highly stable. A scientific paper will be written about the design of the instrument and its results when I can find time. Other Sites To learn more about how it is possible to do science with no academic training (my university degree is in government), see this essay in Science.
See my new YouTube clips. These are primitive, but they certainly affirm the science opportunities for this technology.
My weekly newspaper science column that has appeared in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise since 1999 now also appears each Monday on the science page of the San Antonio Express-News. The column also appears on the paper's web site. Please let your local paper know that the column is available for syndication.
'Country Scientist' starting column today in Express-News
FROM STAFF REPORTS
October 30, 2006
Forrest Mims III, an amateur scientist and author who has pointed out errors in NASA data and published scholarly papers in prestigious journals, begins writing a column today for the San Antonio Express-News. "The Country Scientist" will appear on the newspaper's Science page in the Business section every Monday and will explore how science intersects with everyday life.
"I approach science with the curiosity of a child," Mims said. "I live a constant science fair project."
Mims, 62, has no academic training in science but still has carved a career as a science author, lecturer and syndicated columnist. He has written instructional books on electronics and published papers and photographs in some 70 magazines and journals, including Nature, Science and Popular Mechanics. He is a writer and editor for the Society for Amateur Scientists.
In 1990, he used a $300 homemade instrument to detect a flaw in the way a NASA satellite was measuring deterioration of the ozone layer. The discovery "caused a big flap," he said, but ended up earning him an invitation to speak at the agency.
He said the incident proved to be his big break, winning him recognition as a serious scientist in professional circles. He later was given a Rolex Award for Enterprise for the instrument he built.
Mims is a Texas native who lived in many places during service with the Air Force. He returned to the San Antonio area in 1975 and has lived outside Seguin since 1985, regularly measuring the ozone layer, haze and ultraviolet rays from a field he calls Geronimo Creek Observatory.
He is married to Minnie Chavez Mims, and they have three adult children. Copyright 2006San Antonio Express-News.
Scientific Research Geronimo Creek Observatory, ozone measurements, ultraviolet monitoring, smoke studies, haze measurements and biological studies.
Science Data Representative time series of some measurements made at Geronimo Creek Observatory since 1990, including the ozone layer, solar UV-B, aerosol optical thickness and total column water vapor. Best viewed with a broadband connection.
UV-B Network Forrest M. Mims III is the site operator of the USDA UV-B monitoring site at Texas Lutheran University, Seguin, Texas.
Instruments TOPS and Microtops (total ozone), Sun photometers (haze), near-IR hygrometers (column water vapor), sunlight radiometers (UV-B and photosynthetic radiation). Also, eyeglass-mounted, near-infrared travel aid for the blind.
Publications Scientific and technical publications, books and magazine articles. More than 500 publications have been added to the list here and at www.sunandsky.org. More will be added when time permits.
Family Forrest & Minnie; Eric & Jane; Micheal, Vicki, Isabella & Lilly; and Sarah. Book Store Getting Started in Electronics ( more than 1.4 million sold) and the four collected volumes of the Mini-Notebook series are available online at ForrestMims.com. Other books are available online at Amazon.com. (search on Forrest Mims) or book stores. Or do a search on the book title (in quote marks) at www.google.com.
Lab Kit Store The following Radio Shack lab kit is available from RadioShack (enter "Mims" in search window). "Electronics Learning Lab" (28-280). Complete analog and digital electronics lab kit with two 96-page manuals. $59.99. The "Sun and Sky Monitoring Station" (28-281) is out of production. This kit is a four-channel Sun photometer and radiometer with a 3.5-digit readout, bubble level and compass. It includes a four-unit study course in highly illustrated 64-page manual. It sold for $29.99 new, and you might be able to find it at various Internet sale sites. Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS) The Citizen Scientist is edited by Forrest M. Mims III. This publication and many amateur science resources are available at http://www.sas.org/tcs. If you are interested in promoting science to students, point them to www.labrats.org. This budding organization has major potential.
This entire web site is copyright 2004-09. Click here to read permission policy. Last updated: 26 May 2009.
Sun and sky over Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory
Measuring smoke at Alta Floresta, Brazil. Photograph by Brad White.
RadioShack Sun & Sky Monitoring Station
Daily fisheye images of sky for Jan-Oct 2008 (from a series begun in 2000).
Asian dust layers over Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory on 21 May 2007. Copyright by Forrest M. Mims III.
The Mauna Loa Observatory lidar probes the stratosphere on 5 December 2006. Copyright by Forrest M. Mims III.
Salt crystals from the Pacific Ocean collected by Jim Scanlon and photographed by Forrest M. Mims III.
Cumulus clouds race south as a cool front slides under midlevel clouds moving north. Copyright by Forrest M. Mims III.
Close Call, a very close lightning bolt. Copyright by Forrest M. Mims III
The extraordinarily rare Texas star (Chorioactis geaster) is found only on the Japanese island Kyushu and in seven Texas counties--and at Geronimo Creek Observatory. Copyright by Forrest M. Mims III.
SAN ANTONIO CHAPTER OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
The San Antonio chapter of the American Chemical Society asked me to give the keynote talk at their student awards banquet on 21 May 2009. The event was held at the Farm to Market restaurant near downtown San Antonio. They recorded around two-thirds of the talk using a handheld video camera, and posted it in three segments on YouTube, which are linked below.
