The National Science Foundation has produced a video profiling the work of University of Utah chemical engineering assistant professor Kerry Kelly and associate professor (lecturer) Tony Butterfield in which they are building a network of portable air quality sensors in Salt Lake County.
The portable sensors, which are deployed in homes and schools, can read the particulate matter in the area and report the data to a central server. People can then see the air quality data throughout the county in near-real-time at www.aqandu.org.
Kelly and Butterfield are also teaching students at local schools about the sensors by letting them build a version of the devices out of toy building blocks. Click below to see the NSF video.