I bought an antique theodolite on eBay. I was just looking for cool old equipment to decorate the Rocket Room with. This caught my eye.
I probably shouldn't have bought it, but I don't like backing out of sales when I bid on an item, and nobody else bid on it. So, I won the auction.
I decided to film the unboxing, and accidentally made an ASMR video.
A theodolite is usually used for surveying, although it has other uses, including in rocketry. Contest rocketry used to use a dual theodolite system for tracking altitude. Today, contests pretty universally use altimeters, which are simpler and more reliable. There's a lot less room for tracking errors with an altimeter than there was with theodolites.
Still, it's an interesting tool and the process can be used to teach trigonometry to students. You can make your own simple theodolites to do this. The process is detailed in The Handbook of Model Rocketry, by G. Harry Stine and Bill Stine. You can learn a lot about rocketry in this book: https://amzn.to/3TwWQTc
#shorts #stem #antiques
