The heat wave in Germany is in full swing with temperatures exceeding 35 degrees at times. Yet, the FZK team continues to puts concrete blocks and gravel in place to get everything ready in time for the experiments and the instruments are waiting patiently along the side of the flume to be installed, ready to be woken by the data acquisition system.
In the meantime, the housing for the various drag sensors were built in the workshop so they can safely be installed in a gap between the concrete blocks. These drag sensors are designed to measure the forces that act on them in a very high resolution. During our experiments, we will use these sensors to measure how forces on individual plants differ between summer and winter state of a salt marsh. For this comparison, identical pins are mounted on the sensors. These do not look like real plants, but it means that any differences we measure are caused by the surrounding plants and their state of health and are not influenced by the shape of the pins.
