oric_dan(333):
Can you think of a way to read the boundary electronically?
I'm still working on that. So far, I have a [virtual] robot that runs up and down vertically
in the tube, but not sure what sensor it will use [TIC!]. It depends a lot upon the
properties of the ice in the pool. Eg, a lot of ice cubes are perfectly clear, but the
ones made by my refrigerator ice maker are full of air bubbles, and therefore appear
white, which should be easy to detect from clear ice or water, by light scattering.
Yeah, it's a puzzler.
Grumpy_Mike pointed out that the conductivity of ice is very different than water, by about an order of magnitude, so maybe a transducer could be made that exploited that fact. The resolution would be dependent on the spacing between the electrodes but in this application I don't think that would be a problem.