These include equipment for crushing, grinding, and mineral separation, powder metallurgy, hydrometallurgy, physical metallurgy, and pyrometallurgy and for selected in-house computer applications. The department maintains a modern weather analysis facility. Current weather data is received through the department s satellite ground station and processed on color workstations. Users of this system can display real-time weather observations, satellite imagery, and forecasts generated by the numerical models at the National Meteorological Center. The various products can be overlaid and looped in time.
Additional facilities consist of several networks of workstations.
Many programs developed by students in the course of their research run directly on these machines. Analysis of cloud-radiation data sets and the development of climate models are also undertaken. These units can be configured for mobile operations at remote field sites. The department maintains a cloud physics laboratory including a vertical supercooled cloud tunnel capable of growing ice crystals under free-fall conditions. The laboratory is also equipped with cloud chambers containing devices that measure the morphology of ice crystals.