Hhhhokay so I haven't been keeping up with this for the past week and a half but that's because I've been so busy finishing up my last week at the lab! So here's all that happened in the past week or so:
Last week I finished up my poster, got it approved, and sent it to print! I also worked on building some transducers so that I could get some technical experience at the lab. It took a long time to build those because you have to wait hours for stuff like silver epoxy (basically a type of conducting glue) and stycast (an insulating material, kind of like an oily liquid that dries hard and plastic-y) and things like that to dry. However it was a great experience and probably one of the only parts of the summer that directly related to mechanical engineering. Anyway, this took up most of my last week and of the half-day I had on Monday.
Today, I had my check-out meeting at the lab. I had to give back my badge and other things that belonged to the lab (like my awesome safety glasses). After that, I had to go register and set up my poster at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos, where the poster session is located. After that, I picked up my mom and we went out to lunch. I had to be back for poster judging at 1pm. I originally thought that today was the poster session open to the public but it ended up being the judging day (or “judgement day” as I like to call it, and I’ll explain in a minute) and the open session is tomorrow morning. I wasn’t planning on going tomorrow but I think I will go for an hour so that I have a better experience with presenting my poster (and so my mom can hear me present as well).
So the reason why today was “judgement day” was because it was a rough experience. The first judge I had pretty much ripped me apart as far as the amount of questions and detail he was asking about. He also knew a lot about my research and was “testing” my knowledge of it. He pretty much made a fool out of me and made me feel stupid. He asked a lot about the microstructural and atomic details of my research and of the superconductor I was working with, and that wasn’t my focus at all. I focused more on the technique because my mentor and I felt that it was more beneficial than the physics because of my major and my career goals. However, this judge assumed I knew more about the physics behind my research and proceeded to bombard me with questions and comments. I told him flat out when I didn’t know anything about what he was asking and he explained it to me, which I think was his way of teaching me, but it made me feel inferior. He also didn’t give me a chance to go through my whole poster before he started asking me questions, which also threw me off my train of thought a lot. Anyway, he was a pompous jerk and one of the reasons why I hate physicists (haha). The second judge didn’t say much but he let me go through my poster and only asked a few questions at the end. It was a bit of a confident boost, but I was pretty worn out by the end of the session. We only had to be judged twice and then we were allowed to leave.
Tomorrow, I will probably stop by for an hour to be by my poster for the open session, and hopefully it will be easier and calmer. After that, my mom and I will start our road trip back to Tallahassee!
The road trip will be as follows: We will start going south in New Mexico and stop in Roswell (maybe go to the UFO museum for kicks) and go to Carlsbad Caverns! We are going to take a tour of the caverns which I am extremely excited about because I’ve heard great things about it. Next we will drive a few more hours and stay overnight in Texas. The next day, we will pass through San Antonio and head to Houston. We will stop there and visit the Johnson Space Center (part of NASA)!! We are also going to visit IKEA to shop for some furniture for my apartment, since the closest IKEA to Tallahassee is in Orlando. Then, we will stay somewhere between Houston and Baton Rouge (probably somewhere in Louisiana though). The next day we might stop in either Baton Rouge or New Orleans if we feel up to it, and then we will be in Tallahassee late at night on the 6th. It’s going to be a long trip but I’m excited for our pitstops along the way. I will try my best to update each night of the trip, but I can’t guarantee I will have enough energy!
Peace & Love,
Valerie
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Week 7
Ooops! I skipped Week 6! I was very busy last week with my experiment and then I would come home from work and just veg out for the night. This weekend was busy too but so fun! I'll explain this in a bit.
So last week, we set up my experiment to run and we ran into a lot of problems with the equipment and the programs and such. The experiment was only supposed to take one or two days and ended up taking most of the weekend and the week! The computer program kept crashing every once in a while so when that happened we had to restart the program and the hardware. My poor mentor actually came in on the weekend to make sure the experiment was running correctly (and also to make sure there was plenty of liquid helium left to use and that the experiment was being conservative with it). Last week I also started a side project: I am going to be building my own transducers! The whole process only takes a day or so, and after my poster is finished I will have a lot of time to work on that and some other side projects. Also, Friday of last week was a day off, but I came in early in the morning so that Victor could show me an experiment to measure magnetic susceptibility of a sample with one of the magnets!! It sounds exciting, and I was very excited to see the experiment, but it was not what I thought it would be. The usual magnet experiments that people do at the lab deal with short pulsing and long pulsing, which is basically just a change in the magnetic field over a certain period of time and you measure the sample's response to the change in field. Usually this change is very fast, like in microseconds. There is a pretty B.A. feeling to the whole process. The speakers go "Charging Banks" when they are charging the capactiors and then "Ready to fire....FIRE" when they finally fire the "shot" of electricity to the magnet, which makes a loud clanking sound for some reason. However, the process that we were dealing with was very slow. We cooled the magnet down to helium-4 temperature and put the probe with the sample into the magnet. Then we took the magnet slowly up to a certain magnetic field (when I was watching, we went up to 10 Teslas) and recorded the response of the sample in terms of frequency and amplitude. Not too exciting, but now I get to say I played with one of the magnets at the magnet lab, hehe!
This weekend was a lot of fun! On Friday after I left the lab, the girl I work with named Yuliya and her friend and I went to this amusement park called Cliff's in Albuquerque. It was so much fun but it was SO hot out! We all got a little bit of heat stroke and the rides didn't help that much because we got dizzy on a lot of them. There was really only one typical roller coaster, but some of the other rides like the Super Fireball (which is a huge hoop that flips you upside down like 43829438 times in a row and then backwards!), the Cliff Hanger (one that brings you really high up in the sky and drops you straight down!), and the Sidewinder (a pendulum type ride that spins you around and up and down) were crazy rides even though they weren't conventional rollercoasters. We also played some games and won some cute stuffed animals!!
On Saturday, I had to go back to Santa Fe to get my car fixed for the 1000th time. This time it was truly fixed!! After that, I went into downtown Santa Fe and had lunch and walked around by myself. I went into some shops and bought some cute things for myself and others. Then by the time I got home I was so exhausted from waking up so early and from the day before that I just vegged out the rest of the day. Sunday was pretty much the same thing! I needed to sleep and relax.
Anyway, this week is consisting of poster preparation. The mini rough draft of the poster is due on Thursday so I have to finish it tomorrow. I am half done and it looks really nice! I have some cool pictures on there of the setup and the sample, and one frequency sweep. Tomorrow I will be putting together my experimental results and conclusion to the poster and then it will be done! Apparently, we're going to print 2 posters so I can take one back with me to FSU for the WIMSE Research Symposium. Now that I have a cool poster and really interesting research, I am excited to present at the WIMSE symposium this year. Two years ago, I was frightened to present my poster because I had no idea what my research was about and it was really over my head. So this year will definitely be better! I am a little nervous about the poster session here however because a lot of the people from the lab will be asking me questions and they obviously know more than I do about physics. Technically my poster is in the Materials Science category but the concentration is in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics so I'm sure I will get a lot of physicists asking me questions. I am just going to take it as a learning experience and try to have fun with it.
In 6 days, my mom will be flying in from NY!!! She will be taking a little trip to Albuquerque to explore on her own for a few days and then when she gets back, we are going to do some exploring around here. I have been wanting to go to Bandelier National Monument, do some hiking somewhere around here, go to the hot springs in the Jemez Mountains, etc. We are both really excited to do those things! The student poster session is on August 3rd in the afternoon, so we will be leaving here on August 4th (exactly 2 weeks from tomorrow!). On the way, we are going to stop outside Albuquerque and go to Sandia Peak to ride the "world's longest aerial tramway" and get lunch at the top of the peak. After that, we will start the long trip back to Tallahassee and then a few days after we get there I will be home sweet home on Long Island!! I can't wait to get home, it feels like it's been forever!
Until next time...
Peace & Love,
Val
So last week, we set up my experiment to run and we ran into a lot of problems with the equipment and the programs and such. The experiment was only supposed to take one or two days and ended up taking most of the weekend and the week! The computer program kept crashing every once in a while so when that happened we had to restart the program and the hardware. My poor mentor actually came in on the weekend to make sure the experiment was running correctly (and also to make sure there was plenty of liquid helium left to use and that the experiment was being conservative with it). Last week I also started a side project: I am going to be building my own transducers! The whole process only takes a day or so, and after my poster is finished I will have a lot of time to work on that and some other side projects. Also, Friday of last week was a day off, but I came in early in the morning so that Victor could show me an experiment to measure magnetic susceptibility of a sample with one of the magnets!! It sounds exciting, and I was very excited to see the experiment, but it was not what I thought it would be. The usual magnet experiments that people do at the lab deal with short pulsing and long pulsing, which is basically just a change in the magnetic field over a certain period of time and you measure the sample's response to the change in field. Usually this change is very fast, like in microseconds. There is a pretty B.A. feeling to the whole process. The speakers go "Charging Banks" when they are charging the capactiors and then "Ready to fire....FIRE" when they finally fire the "shot" of electricity to the magnet, which makes a loud clanking sound for some reason. However, the process that we were dealing with was very slow. We cooled the magnet down to helium-4 temperature and put the probe with the sample into the magnet. Then we took the magnet slowly up to a certain magnetic field (when I was watching, we went up to 10 Teslas) and recorded the response of the sample in terms of frequency and amplitude. Not too exciting, but now I get to say I played with one of the magnets at the magnet lab, hehe!
This weekend was a lot of fun! On Friday after I left the lab, the girl I work with named Yuliya and her friend and I went to this amusement park called Cliff's in Albuquerque. It was so much fun but it was SO hot out! We all got a little bit of heat stroke and the rides didn't help that much because we got dizzy on a lot of them. There was really only one typical roller coaster, but some of the other rides like the Super Fireball (which is a huge hoop that flips you upside down like 43829438 times in a row and then backwards!), the Cliff Hanger (one that brings you really high up in the sky and drops you straight down!), and the Sidewinder (a pendulum type ride that spins you around and up and down) were crazy rides even though they weren't conventional rollercoasters. We also played some games and won some cute stuffed animals!!
On Saturday, I had to go back to Santa Fe to get my car fixed for the 1000th time. This time it was truly fixed!! After that, I went into downtown Santa Fe and had lunch and walked around by myself. I went into some shops and bought some cute things for myself and others. Then by the time I got home I was so exhausted from waking up so early and from the day before that I just vegged out the rest of the day. Sunday was pretty much the same thing! I needed to sleep and relax.
Anyway, this week is consisting of poster preparation. The mini rough draft of the poster is due on Thursday so I have to finish it tomorrow. I am half done and it looks really nice! I have some cool pictures on there of the setup and the sample, and one frequency sweep. Tomorrow I will be putting together my experimental results and conclusion to the poster and then it will be done! Apparently, we're going to print 2 posters so I can take one back with me to FSU for the WIMSE Research Symposium. Now that I have a cool poster and really interesting research, I am excited to present at the WIMSE symposium this year. Two years ago, I was frightened to present my poster because I had no idea what my research was about and it was really over my head. So this year will definitely be better! I am a little nervous about the poster session here however because a lot of the people from the lab will be asking me questions and they obviously know more than I do about physics. Technically my poster is in the Materials Science category but the concentration is in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics so I'm sure I will get a lot of physicists asking me questions. I am just going to take it as a learning experience and try to have fun with it.
In 6 days, my mom will be flying in from NY!!! She will be taking a little trip to Albuquerque to explore on her own for a few days and then when she gets back, we are going to do some exploring around here. I have been wanting to go to Bandelier National Monument, do some hiking somewhere around here, go to the hot springs in the Jemez Mountains, etc. We are both really excited to do those things! The student poster session is on August 3rd in the afternoon, so we will be leaving here on August 4th (exactly 2 weeks from tomorrow!). On the way, we are going to stop outside Albuquerque and go to Sandia Peak to ride the "world's longest aerial tramway" and get lunch at the top of the peak. After that, we will start the long trip back to Tallahassee and then a few days after we get there I will be home sweet home on Long Island!! I can't wait to get home, it feels like it's been forever!
Until next time...
Peace & Love,
Val
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Week 5
This summer is really going by fast..It's already Week 5! I am both sad and happy because my summer is half over which means my internship is half over, but I'm glad that I get to go home soon because I am very homesick! In 19 days my mom flies into New Mexico and a few days after that my internship is over and we get to explore and then make the loooooong drive back to Tallahassee. A few days after that I get to go home to Long Island!!!! Even though I am sad that I only get to be home for 2 weeks, I am looking forward to starting the new academic year. I feel like this year is going to be different. I have grown from this internship in a lot of ways. I have always been the typical good student who studies, does the homework, gets good grades, etc. but I feel like now I will be the type of student who is excited to learn. I always go to class, but sometimes I slack off and daydream and I don't really pay attention. I always end up re-learning what was taught in class for the test, and I usually do well. But after this internship, I feel like there is more to just going to class, taking the test, and doing homework. It all matters! I never realized that before. Everything I've ever learned in physics, calculus, engineering, etc. is being applied to real experiments right in front of my eyes, and I have always taken what I've learned for granted. In the back of my mind, I always knew that I would need that stuff later on but I was so burnt out after each semester that I usually just emptied my brain of all the stuff I crammed in for the exams. Now, I am going to be the student who is excited to learn (or at least tries to be excited...some topics will always be boring) and who really thinks about what she's learning and doesn't write it off as worthless. I think being in the lab environment, whether it is somewhere I decide to be for the rest of my life or not, has taught me that there is always something to learn about and something to improve on which makes it exciting. I never really thought about school that way before, but now I am. If nothing else comes out of this internship, the desire to learn is definitely a worthwhile result!
Anyway, I'm done being dramatic and cheesy haha. This week has been pretty good so far. It is only Wednesday though! Yesterday felt like it took forever. I sat in the office for most of the morning because Victor (my mentor) was busy so I read up on some terms I did not know from the conference. I ended up reading about the different magnetic properties of materials, and it turns out that was what my mentor and I discussed about later on! Coincidence? I don't know, maybe. I just thought it was perfect timing. Anyway, after reading for a while (which by the way, during this internship is the first time I've really sat down and read a textbook!) I went down to the PPMS lab (I think it stands for Physical Properties Measurement Systems but I could be wrong) and helped Yoko figure out what was wrong with our probe and set up some equipment. I also (with Yoko's help) wrote a program on LabView (which is SO much better than Fortran, let me tell ya...it uses visual icons instead of text commands which is perfect for someone like me who needs to visualize things) that we would use in our RUS (Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy) experiment. I am not sure what I wrote but apparently it worked somewhat. We had some problems with the equipment however. After Yoko left, I headed back to the office and Victor printed out some slides from his lectures on RUS and his recent poster for me to read.
Today, I went into the lab a bit late because I thought I would be getting my car fixed today but I ended up waiting an hour by the phone for them to call me back and tell me whether my part was in or not. Turns out, the part was getting there this afternoon so I told them I would just bring my car in first thing in the morning. So tomorrow, yet again, I have to come in late to the lab. Tomorrow there is also a student/mentor picnic which should be fun. The 2 kids in my lab and I signed up to volunteer so we will be either setting up, cooking, or cleaning up.
Anyway, today at the lab consisted of more troubleshooting with equipment which was annoying. That took up the rest of the morning. After lunch, I headed to a lecture on "Shocking Experiences with Explosives". It sounds more exciting than it was. It probably could have been very exciting if they hadn't turned off the lights in the auditorium. I was trying SO hard not to fall asleep...can't say that much for the kid next to me however haha. After that was over I headed back to the office and wrote some notes in my lab book about the RUS slides and poster that Victor gave me yesterday. After that, he lectured on the white board about some of the background behind what we are measuring at the lab. This I guess is what inspired me to write that huge first paragraph about learning haha...it just took stuff I learned to a new level I guess and I have been experiencing this all along, not just today.
Okay well it is now dinner and relaxing time.
Peace & Love,
Val
Anyway, I'm done being dramatic and cheesy haha. This week has been pretty good so far. It is only Wednesday though! Yesterday felt like it took forever. I sat in the office for most of the morning because Victor (my mentor) was busy so I read up on some terms I did not know from the conference. I ended up reading about the different magnetic properties of materials, and it turns out that was what my mentor and I discussed about later on! Coincidence? I don't know, maybe. I just thought it was perfect timing. Anyway, after reading for a while (which by the way, during this internship is the first time I've really sat down and read a textbook!) I went down to the PPMS lab (I think it stands for Physical Properties Measurement Systems but I could be wrong) and helped Yoko figure out what was wrong with our probe and set up some equipment. I also (with Yoko's help) wrote a program on LabView (which is SO much better than Fortran, let me tell ya...it uses visual icons instead of text commands which is perfect for someone like me who needs to visualize things) that we would use in our RUS (Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy) experiment. I am not sure what I wrote but apparently it worked somewhat. We had some problems with the equipment however. After Yoko left, I headed back to the office and Victor printed out some slides from his lectures on RUS and his recent poster for me to read.
Today, I went into the lab a bit late because I thought I would be getting my car fixed today but I ended up waiting an hour by the phone for them to call me back and tell me whether my part was in or not. Turns out, the part was getting there this afternoon so I told them I would just bring my car in first thing in the morning. So tomorrow, yet again, I have to come in late to the lab. Tomorrow there is also a student/mentor picnic which should be fun. The 2 kids in my lab and I signed up to volunteer so we will be either setting up, cooking, or cleaning up.
Anyway, today at the lab consisted of more troubleshooting with equipment which was annoying. That took up the rest of the morning. After lunch, I headed to a lecture on "Shocking Experiences with Explosives". It sounds more exciting than it was. It probably could have been very exciting if they hadn't turned off the lights in the auditorium. I was trying SO hard not to fall asleep...can't say that much for the kid next to me however haha. After that was over I headed back to the office and wrote some notes in my lab book about the RUS slides and poster that Victor gave me yesterday. After that, he lectured on the white board about some of the background behind what we are measuring at the lab. This I guess is what inspired me to write that huge first paragraph about learning haha...it just took stuff I learned to a new level I guess and I have been experiencing this all along, not just today.
Okay well it is now dinner and relaxing time.
Peace & Love,
Val
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Week 4
Long time no blog! Sorry to those of you who read my blog regularly. It's been hard to keep up with posting. Anywho...
Last Thursday I had Electrical Safety Training. It was an all day session so you can imagine I was exhausted at the end of the day. I am also deathly afraid of electricity now. I was afraid to plug in my phone charger after the class haha! Some of the material was common sense, like "Don't put your fingers in an electrical socket" but some of it was practical knowledge about working with electricity in a lab setting. Also, realizing how many volts are in a carpet shock was scary! (I can't remember the exact number but it was pretty big) On Friday I helped set up an experiment that I will help run tomorrow. It took a long time because the software was acting up on the computer and it wasn't syncing data to the equipment. Hopefully we'll fix that tomorrow and start running some gosh darn experiments!
So it turns out I was able to register for the conference in Santa Fe this week. The only downside is that I had to pay $600 out of my pocket, but I will be reimbursed later. Luckily I just got my first paycheck deposited and I was able to afford it (for now...that's more than I pay for rent in Tally!) Hopefully I will get reimbursed ASAP so I can spend my hard earned money on better things like clothes and mani-pedi's haha (hey, I'm still a girl remember :P)
The conference is all day, 5 days a week. Tomorrow I have another training session so I will not be able to go to the conference (by the time I get out, all of the scientists are going on an excursion into various parts of NM). After training I will go to the lab and work with Yoko, the postdoc I have been working with on the probe and setting up the experiment I mentioned above. On Thursday I will go to the conference again, and then on Friday (my day off--I have every other Friday off) the conference lasts a half day so I will ask if I could skip it so I can get my car fixed finally.
On a different note about the conference, it is called the International Conference on SCES (Strongly Correlated Electron Systems). Don't ask me what that means because I have no idea. All I know is that most of the talks and posters revolve around correlated electrons and condensed matter physics stuff, things I don't understand. I didn't get that far in the classes as a physics major and I was just about to take quantum mechanics, so I am very clueless about every aspect of this conference. The only topics that makes some sense to me are things involving superconductors and materials science stuff like lattice structures and phase diagrams (thanks Hellstrom! [my materials science teacher last semester]) It made me feel better when I spoke with my mentor and he said he barely understood what was going on too. I guess the talks were too specialized for anyone not specifically in that field because a lot of other people from my lab were talking about not understanding the talks either! Personally, I'd rather be at a conference about cool engineering stuff and listen to talks about how they build this cool stuff and look at posters that show their cool designs of their cool stuff..I guess this is how I know I chose the right major, haha!
On a side note, I have a 4 day weekend coming up! (That is, if I am allowed to take my Friday off) I was unaware that the 4th of July was on Sunday which means we have Monday the 5th off! I don't know what I am going to do with all the free time, or what I'll do for the 4th but all I know is I have 2 sweet movies to see ASAP (Toy Story 3 and Eclipse..I know, I'm a huge geek :P) Hhhokay later kids.
Peace & Love,
Val
Last Thursday I had Electrical Safety Training. It was an all day session so you can imagine I was exhausted at the end of the day. I am also deathly afraid of electricity now. I was afraid to plug in my phone charger after the class haha! Some of the material was common sense, like "Don't put your fingers in an electrical socket" but some of it was practical knowledge about working with electricity in a lab setting. Also, realizing how many volts are in a carpet shock was scary! (I can't remember the exact number but it was pretty big) On Friday I helped set up an experiment that I will help run tomorrow. It took a long time because the software was acting up on the computer and it wasn't syncing data to the equipment. Hopefully we'll fix that tomorrow and start running some gosh darn experiments!
So it turns out I was able to register for the conference in Santa Fe this week. The only downside is that I had to pay $600 out of my pocket, but I will be reimbursed later. Luckily I just got my first paycheck deposited and I was able to afford it (for now...that's more than I pay for rent in Tally!) Hopefully I will get reimbursed ASAP so I can spend my hard earned money on better things like clothes and mani-pedi's haha (hey, I'm still a girl remember :P)
The conference is all day, 5 days a week. Tomorrow I have another training session so I will not be able to go to the conference (by the time I get out, all of the scientists are going on an excursion into various parts of NM). After training I will go to the lab and work with Yoko, the postdoc I have been working with on the probe and setting up the experiment I mentioned above. On Thursday I will go to the conference again, and then on Friday (my day off--I have every other Friday off) the conference lasts a half day so I will ask if I could skip it so I can get my car fixed finally.
On a different note about the conference, it is called the International Conference on SCES (Strongly Correlated Electron Systems). Don't ask me what that means because I have no idea. All I know is that most of the talks and posters revolve around correlated electrons and condensed matter physics stuff, things I don't understand. I didn't get that far in the classes as a physics major and I was just about to take quantum mechanics, so I am very clueless about every aspect of this conference. The only topics that makes some sense to me are things involving superconductors and materials science stuff like lattice structures and phase diagrams (thanks Hellstrom! [my materials science teacher last semester]) It made me feel better when I spoke with my mentor and he said he barely understood what was going on too. I guess the talks were too specialized for anyone not specifically in that field because a lot of other people from my lab were talking about not understanding the talks either! Personally, I'd rather be at a conference about cool engineering stuff and listen to talks about how they build this cool stuff and look at posters that show their cool designs of their cool stuff..I guess this is how I know I chose the right major, haha!
On a side note, I have a 4 day weekend coming up! (That is, if I am allowed to take my Friday off) I was unaware that the 4th of July was on Sunday which means we have Monday the 5th off! I don't know what I am going to do with all the free time, or what I'll do for the 4th but all I know is I have 2 sweet movies to see ASAP (Toy Story 3 and Eclipse..I know, I'm a huge geek :P) Hhhokay later kids.
Peace & Love,
Val
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Still Week 3
Today was a pretty busy day. I started off continuing to practice soldering so that I could work on the probe today. Later in the morning, there was a meeting for students and the director of the lab made a speech. After that, the kids from my lab and I went to lunch. After lunch we headed to a lecture on "Dynamic Properties of Materials". It was another interesting talk because it helped me put my classes into perspective. I am realizing more and more each day how important my classes are and how they truly do apply to real life. When I was a physics major, it was hard for me to put the things I learned into reality but with engineering it is very easy. After this summer I will be more focused on learning in my classes, and not just learning to pass the tests or the class but for my future career because I know now how much it matters to me. I'm pretty inspired after only 3 weeks of this internship to complete my degree and get out there and do something meaningful with it. Anyway, after the talk I went back into the lab and worked on the probe. First I had to de-solder the existing wires of the probe tip and detach it from the rest of the probe. Then I had to solder the probe tip on a different probe (I'm not too sure why we are using a different probe but it is smaller so I think it's for a different experiment setup). Soldering is really fun and I really like being able to do something with my hands. I feel like I've accomplished something and seeing a physical product of my work in my hands feels awesome! The science part of research is good and all but I prefer to do more technical work. But for this summer I have to do more science since I will have to produce results of my research in a short amount of time.
Tomorrow I have electrical safety training all day so I will not be in the lab (nor will I have anything interesting to write about tomorrow). Next week there was a slight change of plans. I might be able to go to the conference in Santa Fe that everyone is going to. My mentor and the manager of our group at the mag lab are going to find out if I can get a student pass. The other REU girl in our group may be able to get one too. This would be cool if we both could go because it will be interesting to hear the talks (especially those of our mentors and the others of the mag lab) and we will be able to get to know each other better. I will probably find out sometime tomorrow if I can go. If not, I will be doing data analysis (mostly from home because I do not have a working computer to use at the lab and in order to bring my laptop there I have to go through insanely long procedures). Hopefully I will be able to go to the conference (but if not, it would be nice to have a few days off!)
Peace & Love,
Val
Tomorrow I have electrical safety training all day so I will not be in the lab (nor will I have anything interesting to write about tomorrow). Next week there was a slight change of plans. I might be able to go to the conference in Santa Fe that everyone is going to. My mentor and the manager of our group at the mag lab are going to find out if I can get a student pass. The other REU girl in our group may be able to get one too. This would be cool if we both could go because it will be interesting to hear the talks (especially those of our mentors and the others of the mag lab) and we will be able to get to know each other better. I will probably find out sometime tomorrow if I can go. If not, I will be doing data analysis (mostly from home because I do not have a working computer to use at the lab and in order to bring my laptop there I have to go through insanely long procedures). Hopefully I will be able to go to the conference (but if not, it would be nice to have a few days off!)
Peace & Love,
Val
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Week 3
The last part of Week 2 at the lab was pretty much the same as the first part. Week 3 started off with a 4 hour training session (not at the lab) on waste generation. It was really boring but luckily there was no test at the end. After I got back to the lab it was time to go to a lecture on medical radioisotope production. It was the most interesting lecture to date! By the time the lecture was over it was 3:30pm and there was not much left to the day. I headed back to the office and my mentor was not back from the inspections he had to do of other labs. When he got back I did some data analysis on the computer and went home.
Today was a bit less boring. Pretty soon after I got there this morning I headed down to the lab and did some more data analysis. After I finished, my mentor was in a meeting so I did some reading on superconductors. The afternoon started out boring because I had to complete some online training courses after lunch which took up about 2 and a half hours. My mentor was still pretty busy after that (he is preparing a poster and a lecture for a conference next week) so I went down to the lab with another postdoc and she taught me how to solder wires for a new probe they will be using this week. It was the first technical thing I've done here and it was pretty cool. The wires are so tiny that you need a microscope to strip the wires of the coating. One wire was so hard to strip because it was a coaxial wire with a plastic coating and the core wire had some sort of sticky coating (I think it might have been teflon). The soldering part was fun but it was scary because the soldering iron is so hot (about 500 degrees F!!) and this girl in my lab burnt herself last week with it. She said it didn't hurt and it really wasn't that bad of a burn but I was still afraid to burn myself. I was just practicing how to do it today and tomorrow I will probably do it for real on the probe. (I hope I don't mess up!) On Thursday I have Electrical Safety training all day which I've heard mixed reviews about. Hopefully it won't be too boring.
Next week, most of the people in our lab will be at a conference in Santa Fe. My mentor asked if I could come to the conference but it would have cost them $600! Unfortunately students are not allowed in the lab without a supervisor so we will have most of the week off. I have a training session on Wednesday, lectures on Monday and Wednesday afternoon, and my mentor said he will be giving me something to do on my computer at home so I will not be completely without work but it will be nice to sleep in after 3 weeks of waking up at 7am! This is the perfect opportunity to get the brakes on my car looked at so I'll have that to do as well.
I'm already getting very homesick for NY and Tallahassee. I can't wait to get back to Long Island because summer is the best up there and I really really need to go to the beach! I've also been craving BBQs, bonfires, Port Jeff (mostly going to Ralph's Italian ices!), the city (because I'm in the middle of nowhere here!), my family, and my friends! Oh, and I can't wait to see my newly refurbished kitchen! Okay, enough about my homesickness..
Peace & Love,
Val
Today was a bit less boring. Pretty soon after I got there this morning I headed down to the lab and did some more data analysis. After I finished, my mentor was in a meeting so I did some reading on superconductors. The afternoon started out boring because I had to complete some online training courses after lunch which took up about 2 and a half hours. My mentor was still pretty busy after that (he is preparing a poster and a lecture for a conference next week) so I went down to the lab with another postdoc and she taught me how to solder wires for a new probe they will be using this week. It was the first technical thing I've done here and it was pretty cool. The wires are so tiny that you need a microscope to strip the wires of the coating. One wire was so hard to strip because it was a coaxial wire with a plastic coating and the core wire had some sort of sticky coating (I think it might have been teflon). The soldering part was fun but it was scary because the soldering iron is so hot (about 500 degrees F!!) and this girl in my lab burnt herself last week with it. She said it didn't hurt and it really wasn't that bad of a burn but I was still afraid to burn myself. I was just practicing how to do it today and tomorrow I will probably do it for real on the probe. (I hope I don't mess up!) On Thursday I have Electrical Safety training all day which I've heard mixed reviews about. Hopefully it won't be too boring.
Next week, most of the people in our lab will be at a conference in Santa Fe. My mentor asked if I could come to the conference but it would have cost them $600! Unfortunately students are not allowed in the lab without a supervisor so we will have most of the week off. I have a training session on Wednesday, lectures on Monday and Wednesday afternoon, and my mentor said he will be giving me something to do on my computer at home so I will not be completely without work but it will be nice to sleep in after 3 weeks of waking up at 7am! This is the perfect opportunity to get the brakes on my car looked at so I'll have that to do as well.
I'm already getting very homesick for NY and Tallahassee. I can't wait to get back to Long Island because summer is the best up there and I really really need to go to the beach! I've also been craving BBQs, bonfires, Port Jeff (mostly going to Ralph's Italian ices!), the city (because I'm in the middle of nowhere here!), my family, and my friends! Oh, and I can't wait to see my newly refurbished kitchen! Okay, enough about my homesickness..
Peace & Love,
Val
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Week 1 and counting...
It's been a while since I've added a new post, I apologize. I have been so exhausted after coming home from being at the lab all day that I haven't had the energy to blog. I barely have enough energy now but I feel like if I don't update soon my followers will get angry at me haha.
The last week has been a lot of reading, learning, sitting around, and sleeping (not at the lab of course). I usually get to the lab between 8 and 8:30am. Parking is an issue (it is almost as bad as it is at FSU) so I try to get there as soon as I can because after 8:30 the lots fill up completely. Usually I sit at my desk and read papers or a textbook or something for the first hour or so because my mentor is at his desk working on whatever he needs to for his own research. Then we head down to the lab and start working. The other day I was working on Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy (RUS) experiments. The samples I was working on were not the greatest quality so I was not able to get good results. I was given another sample to try late last week and that gave good results so I was happy that I did something right! Yesterday, I analyzed the data from the latest sample. Today, my mentor decided to change it up a bit and set up an experiment for me to do that will allow me to work with cryogenics (aka. liquid nitrogen and helium--I am technically not allowed to handle the cryogenics because I haven't had cryogenics training yet, but I am allowed to observe). The liquid nitrogen allows us to study different properties of materials at colder temperatures (lower than room temperature down to around 70 Kelvin). Next week (hopefully) we will be able to work with liquid helium which will allow us to reach temperatures of about 4K. To give an idea to those of you who are not familiar with the Kelvin scale of temp, 300K is room temp and around 273K is the freezing point of water. So the temps we're dealing with are quite chilly! My mentor poured the liquid nitrogen on the floor to demonstrate that it evaporates almost instantaneously in room temp. I have seen this done before in physics and chemistry classes but it was still awesome. I love how it freezes things on contact, and I noticed that it collected and froze dirt that was on the floor and it just rolled around, hah! Anyway, that was my day.
Now onto my life outside the lab. My first real weekend here was pretty fun. On Saturday I went bowling and to see "Get Him to the Greek" (hilarious!) with the kids from my lab. The closest bowling alley and movie theater around was about 25 minutes away in a town called Espanola (not the nicest place to be however). Then on Sunday a friend and I went hiking on the Pajarito ski trails. The elevation at the top was about 10,000 feet! Of course, Los Alamos itself is at about 7,000 feet and the bottom of the mountain was already at around 9,000 feet so it's not like I hiked Everest or anything but I was so shocked that I did it! I've never been hiking before in my life and at one point I didn't think I could make it. The paths were very steep but I'm also not yet acclimated to the elevation so it was tough to breathe. The way down was slippery because of a lot of small loose rocks and I fell a few times but nothing crazy. I wasn't even that sore until today. I woke up this morning and I could barely move! It was totally worth it though!
This week I have a three day weekend!! I am on the same schedule as my mentor so we work 9 hour days Monday through Thursday, one Friday is an 8 hour day, and the next Friday is an off day! It is rough to work 9 hour days, especially since I have never worked over 24 hours a week in my life! It is definitely easier to work in a lab setting for 9 hours than it is to work in retail, an office, or a restaurant and I don't dread going into work every day haha..those other jobs just aren't for me I guess. I like having some sort of freedom at work (and once I start my own experiments it will be a very free environment--I am still shadowing my mentor as of now so there is still some structure) and I like being able to move around and not having to be stuck in one place all day. I hope that if I end up working in an industry it will be similar to this or I might just stick with doing research as a career! Who knows....
Okay, I'm officially wiped out. I'm going to go and watch some mindless tv shows (I've been watching back to back episodes of The O.C...don't judge, it's actually an awesome show and extremely addicting) and then go to bed early.
Peace & Love,
Val
The last week has been a lot of reading, learning, sitting around, and sleeping (not at the lab of course). I usually get to the lab between 8 and 8:30am. Parking is an issue (it is almost as bad as it is at FSU) so I try to get there as soon as I can because after 8:30 the lots fill up completely. Usually I sit at my desk and read papers or a textbook or something for the first hour or so because my mentor is at his desk working on whatever he needs to for his own research. Then we head down to the lab and start working. The other day I was working on Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy (RUS) experiments. The samples I was working on were not the greatest quality so I was not able to get good results. I was given another sample to try late last week and that gave good results so I was happy that I did something right! Yesterday, I analyzed the data from the latest sample. Today, my mentor decided to change it up a bit and set up an experiment for me to do that will allow me to work with cryogenics (aka. liquid nitrogen and helium--I am technically not allowed to handle the cryogenics because I haven't had cryogenics training yet, but I am allowed to observe). The liquid nitrogen allows us to study different properties of materials at colder temperatures (lower than room temperature down to around 70 Kelvin). Next week (hopefully) we will be able to work with liquid helium which will allow us to reach temperatures of about 4K. To give an idea to those of you who are not familiar with the Kelvin scale of temp, 300K is room temp and around 273K is the freezing point of water. So the temps we're dealing with are quite chilly! My mentor poured the liquid nitrogen on the floor to demonstrate that it evaporates almost instantaneously in room temp. I have seen this done before in physics and chemistry classes but it was still awesome. I love how it freezes things on contact, and I noticed that it collected and froze dirt that was on the floor and it just rolled around, hah! Anyway, that was my day.
Now onto my life outside the lab. My first real weekend here was pretty fun. On Saturday I went bowling and to see "Get Him to the Greek" (hilarious!) with the kids from my lab. The closest bowling alley and movie theater around was about 25 minutes away in a town called Espanola (not the nicest place to be however). Then on Sunday a friend and I went hiking on the Pajarito ski trails. The elevation at the top was about 10,000 feet! Of course, Los Alamos itself is at about 7,000 feet and the bottom of the mountain was already at around 9,000 feet so it's not like I hiked Everest or anything but I was so shocked that I did it! I've never been hiking before in my life and at one point I didn't think I could make it. The paths were very steep but I'm also not yet acclimated to the elevation so it was tough to breathe. The way down was slippery because of a lot of small loose rocks and I fell a few times but nothing crazy. I wasn't even that sore until today. I woke up this morning and I could barely move! It was totally worth it though!
This week I have a three day weekend!! I am on the same schedule as my mentor so we work 9 hour days Monday through Thursday, one Friday is an 8 hour day, and the next Friday is an off day! It is rough to work 9 hour days, especially since I have never worked over 24 hours a week in my life! It is definitely easier to work in a lab setting for 9 hours than it is to work in retail, an office, or a restaurant and I don't dread going into work every day haha..those other jobs just aren't for me I guess. I like having some sort of freedom at work (and once I start my own experiments it will be a very free environment--I am still shadowing my mentor as of now so there is still some structure) and I like being able to move around and not having to be stuck in one place all day. I hope that if I end up working in an industry it will be similar to this or I might just stick with doing research as a career! Who knows....
Okay, I'm officially wiped out. I'm going to go and watch some mindless tv shows (I've been watching back to back episodes of The O.C...don't judge, it's actually an awesome show and extremely addicting) and then go to bed early.
Peace & Love,
Val
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