Many high school students are planning to lounge around the lake this summer, but not Mendham High School, New Jersey, student Justin Beckerman. The 18-year old teen will be doing the final testing of his one-man DIY submarine, made from drainage pipe:
Co-existing with Jet Skis and fishing boats in the picturesque West Jersey lake is Justin’s latest invention — complete with lights, paddles, ballasts, air compressors, 2,000 feet of wire and a Plexiglas dome top that looks like the head of Star Wars robot R2-D2.Mike Frassinelli of The Star-Ledger has the story: Here.
Justin, who turned 18 last weekend, spent a month designing and five months building his 9-foot-long submarine, into which he can fit.
High school student Justin Beckerman made his own single-person
submarine to explore a lake near his New Jersey home, he says, and "see
fish and hopefully find a bit of history, like the cannons from my
neighbors' historic house" dumped in the lake long ago. The project took
him six months and cost $2,000. The window is an old skylight, the
regulators and gauges are from a trashed soda fountain. From CNN:
The submarine has ballast tanks to maintain its depth and equilibrium; air vents that bring oxygen down from the surface; a functioning PA and a range of emergency systems including back-up batteries, a siren, strobe lights, a breathing apparatus and a pump to fight leaks. The vessel can remain submerged for up to two hours and travels beneath the waves at one and a half miles per hour.
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