Week 3 Lab: Surveying

On Monday outside of class of which our group's controller failed to connect to our quadcopter thus allowing it to lose control and fly past Main building to the unknown. Our lab instructors counted is a learning lesson for this week but from now on they expect us to pay for damaged parts as well as missing parts. 

In lab on Thursday, we tried to utilize the digital theodolite only to realize the battery had not been recharged over night. So we decided to come another day to try and use it when it was charged or use an alternative method to measure the height of the building.

Outside of class today at around 8 pm, we used one of the other methods to obtain measurements by a simple trick. I downloaded a protractor app on my phone, we leveled it to the ground straight across from a pole near LeBow Hall. We then used a green laser pointer and pointed it up to the tallest point of the building. We checked to see the angle and it measured to be 72 degrees. From the point that we measured the angle, we then measured the distance from that point to the building. Using a measuring tape, we measured the distance to be 60 feet and 64 inches. Using this angle and distance, we can calculate all other measurements through basic formulas.