Waterworld
culture  

Waterworld

By Kirit Karkare

(All right, it’s been 4 days since OPI, but let’s pretend I posted this a week ago.) So the water system in Atlantis OPI has been giving us quite a few headaches recently. The basic idea is that we have 3 levels: one just below the dance floor level (around 3 inches off the ground), one at 16 inches off the ground, and one at 7.5 feet around the edges of the elevated platforms. Water flows off the sides of the temple into the troughs around the platforms, where they waterfall off the sides into the 16 inch level. This extends around about half of the party, and every 4 feet or so the water there goes into the ground level through notches that we cut.

When you’re dealing with water, it turns out that (surprise surprise) water dripping is one of the worst things you’ll encounter. Unfortunately, we have a ton of leaks. Everywhere there’s water, we put down plastic sheeting. Thick plastic is expensive, so we have to settle for paper-thin .7 mil sheets. It tends to tear when it touches just about anything, so we spend a lot of time patching up all the leaks. You can see a lot of Gorilla tape holding our party together on the 16 inch level:

To get the water running sustainably, we need to fill up the bottom two levels most of the way. That takes a few hours, especially with the leaks – we made a rough estimate that we lose about 5 gallons a minute! As long as that is less than the flow rate of a hose, though, we’re safe. We measured the hose to be about 10 gallons a minute. Either way, it still takes forever to fill up the system, and we need to keep the hose running throughout the party for the water to stay at an acceptable level.

Anyway, that’s the water system. I’ll hopefully get a post up soon about how the party actually went (hint: it was awesome)!

Recommended Articles

My Friday Nights
culture

My Friday Nights

It was the Friday night of midterms during my first year at Caltech, and I was alone in the library. That weekend (week five of term, if you’re keeping count) also happens to coincide with Halloween. But as a bright-eyed frosh trudging my way through Ma 1a lecture notes, I was just baffled that no one else was studying alongside me. Spoiler alert: not all Caltech students spend Friday night—or every night—studying or grinding sets, even during midterms. And especially on Halloween weekend.

By
caltech q and a
culture

caltech q and a

In order to get a good sense of the Caltech community, there is no better way than to talk to the students themselves. To give a little bit of an inside perspective of Caltech, I asked some students a variety of questions. Questions ranged from conspiracy theories to Caltech-specific takes and other random topics.

By
What's on my desk?
culture

What's on my desk?

I’d like to think that I keep a tidy desk, but hey— entropy prevails for everyone. Here’s a breakdown of all the items you could find on my desk, circa February 2023.

By
Searching for snow
culture

Searching for snow

My grandma always says that it rains whenever Dragonssuperior zodiac sign travel, and sure enough, it was raining when I landed at LAX for my last calendar year at Caltech. It’s officially my graduation year—but between leaving campus just before spring term in my freshman year and returning, twenty-one years old, as a junior, it really does feel like my time here has flown by.

By