Great Weekend

Well sorry it's been a couple of days since the last post. Friday I found out that I did well enough on my placement exams that I am in the courses that I need to be in.

My advisor is awesome! He has given me a lot to think about and set me to the task of taking a concept that he was toying with and working out a proof of concept for it. It relates what we already do in the lab to some practical applications. I should be able to do it in the 6 weeks that I have left in the rotation with him.

Much of what I have been doing for the past couple of days is to spend time reading other related work and determining what we need to run the necessary tests.

One of the materials I will be using is a Gallium Indium alloy. Its fun stuff. It is a lot like Mercury, a metal that is a liquid at room temperature. Great Stuff.

Materials chemistry is great stuff. It is going to allow me to learn many varied aspects of chemistry and still stay inside my field of concentration.

The other day we were able to see some of the "nanowires" we built. They looked like the Washington monument.

Fun Stuff!

AFM

Well today I got to use an Atomic Force Microscope.

I'm working on some really ground breaking stuff. It's really cool.

Of course for the moment it's being directed by the senior grad student and our advisor; but I'm actually doing it and discussing it like I actually know what we're talking about.

Other than the placement exams everything is going well. I have a fridge that works (the people who brought it chipped the paint on the walls) and I have hot water what a great thing it was this morning to take a hot shower for the first time in nearly a week.

I like it here, if it weren't so humid I'd think I was in heaven... love to all and good night

Neat Stuff

Well rather than bore you with the details let me say that it was a rough day on the pchem test and a wonderful day in the lab.

I just didn't feel prepared for the test and so I feel that I bombed it. There wasn't much on it besides concepts but for some reason the neuron weren't firing. I woke up late so that started my day off poorly, and then found out that I couldn't use my TI 89 calculator on the test and so I had to use the one on my cell phone. In reality there were only a very few questions that required a calculator but it was the thought of working without a net that was terrifying.

But once we got going in the lab I felt back in my element. I was ready to prepare my own samples for some relatively easy experiments in thin films. I tweaked a few parameters (under the senior grad students direction) and got results that were at least somewhat unexpected. It was what we hoped for and what was predicted. In fact it was nearly 100% exactly what was predicted. That is unusual. It's so good that we are going to run some mroe tests and pursue a publication on the results. Woo Hooo!

Thanks for Reading! Have a great night and keep smiling!

First full day in the lab

Well it was my first full day in the lab. I was able to help a little, but I was also able to hinder a little. I was able to assist in making Pd nanoparticles.
The hardest part of this has been that I am no longer the person with the answers. I am the guy who is an idiot and knows nothing. The reason I had to make the Pd nanoparticles today was that I opened the fridge too fast and broke the bottle they were using for research. it sucked! oh well such is life.

First Night in Lincoln

Well I made it to Lincoln! The drive was much longer than planned due to my need to stop at every spot along the way. I had no idea there was a Lincoln monument just west of Cheyenne Wyoming. So I didn’t get here until one am. Boy is it humid. I’ll go find an apartment in the morning. It was hard to leave the family behind I hope I’m doing the right thing.

Nite all

Wow what a day. It was my last day at Kennecott. It was a great place to work; Wade was a great boss and my co-workers were easy to like. I tried hard to just be cheerful, it was difficult. I was able to finish my last project and report the data for my last samples. Rick should be able to validate my results on the Cu titration. Susy is now the sole morale officer for the lab. Nice place. Well Tuesday I'll be heading to Nebraska, I hope to start in Dr. Barry Cheung's lab working on the self assembly of macromolecules.

Friday the first I attend orientation. Then all the next week I'll be testing for placement.

I hope that I can find a place to live quickly.

well time to sign off.

Nebraska

well I'm off to UNL the cornhuskers home to study the physical chemistry of Nanomaterials.