The New Recruit

By Stephanie Gonzalez

Above is a picture of our cool citizen science tool, Dylos. Its full name is Dylos, the air quality monitor and it is the newest member of the air quality team. Now that we have this little machine working for us we have been able to start the most important part of our project which is the collection of air samples. As of Monday, Dylos started working hard for the air quality team.  It has a good pair of lungs that can inhale the surrounding air for a full three minutes. It measures small particles and large particles in the air. The number we are interested in is the one on the right of the screen, it shows the number of small particles that it inhaled. Small particles consist of fine dust, bacteria, mold, soot, etc. These particles can be particularly troublesome because they are so small that they can embed themselves deep into people’s lungs and even be absorbed by the bloodstream. The picture shows a fraction of an air sample that Dylos collected, do not worry this measurement is quite small.  Furthermore, Dylos will be collecting more air samples throughout winter and spring quarter. It will be accompanying the air quality team to seven different sites in the John Wooden Center and the Bruin Fitness Center two times a day for a little over a month.