Evan Peairs

Hello!

You've reached my website. Most people seem to use this site to initiate conversations about bells. I also like caves, puzzles, and oversized books. Please send emails about these things as well.

Requests for Collaborators

A few of my projects are woefully short staffed. Get in touch if any of these sound fun.

Escape Room: I'm designing an escape room-esque puzzle experience centered mostly around optics phenomena. The initial setting will have no illumination, and unlocking new sources of light will be a central mechanic. I'm aiming for a difficulty a little easier than the average Galactic Puzzle Hunt.

California Cave Survey: I'm a founding member of California's first project to catalog and manage cave data for research and exploration. At this stage we need volunteers to help with software development in particular.

Horrifying Rappel Device: The backcountry canyoneering community has been pushing the limits of lightweight ropes with 22g/m, 6mm dyneema PUR line. Right now the limiting factor isn't total strength, but heat dissipation in the rope. I'm working on ideas for a rappel device which doesn't use rope friction to dissipate your potential energy, which would remove this constraint and allow for some truly deranged rope selections.

Past Projects

Gainful Employment

I worked as an electrical engineer at Joby Aero for a number of years, mostly designing the pilot controls and flight instrumentation. Prior to that I was a research engineer at Otherlab. I also operated a nuclear reactor for a few years!

Thesis

For my undergrad thesis I came up with a new way of designing flat plate bells which made it easy to tune their overtones. The bells were designed by simulating their vibration and then optimizing the boundary shapes to match the sound. Here's the code if you want to reproduce it, and you can check out my seminar presentation, or an article, or an interview.

I also built a electronic speckle pattern interferometer to check its vibration modes against the simulation.

Here's the outline of a bell converging to its target

Ropework

Much of my free time goes to exploring caves and canyons. For example, here's a blog post with me in it. Below are some pictures of places I was instrumental in discovering. Invite me on your expedition!