Starting off on a lazy foot

Today I get to start to work for real since I’m done with the training camp… Well, I thought. David Johnson (my mentor) and Sage (my other mentor) are still gone, so I hung out with Gavin all day and we though of a good project for me that hasn’t been done and I could get a paper published. Around 1, I decide I did enough today since I wasn’t doing anything productive. Gavin gave me a couple of papers and a thesis to read, so that what I did today. I only got through one paper and a good part of the thesis today. It’s a laid back week until I get my project straightened out.

Last Day of Training

It was a very simple day. I woke up earlier then usually, skate boarded to University of Oregon so my team can prep for the PowerPoint we have to give on our data. When giving our data to the camp, everyone did pretty well in our group. I have to stage fright issues I need to overcome—Fast, really fast. That was it for today.

Being Productive Today

Today I slept in a little later because I shaved last night, made lunch, and packed everything. I got up at 7:30 AM and left the house at 8. Today we had a lecture on what to do with our data and then we worked with excel on some XRR data. I though about how I could of made a MATLAB script which could of done all the calculation for me. If I work with the XRR this summer, I will make one so I won’t have to do those tedious calculations again. After that, we got let in the lab early to do more work before our presentation tomorrow. We did lithography, XPS, Raman, and started putting our data together. We discover something interesting happening to our solution when it WASN’T heated and made into a thin film. Their was an extra bump on the UV-Vis, which I think is because thermodynamics is pushing the decomposition of a certain species, so it is present when we don’t heat it and spin the films. All of other data is actually lining up with it. This is the stuff that gets me excited to be a scientist. I had to work a little later to get the PowerPoint together. The training is almost over. After this week, I just need X-Ray safety training and then start working on my paper/project.

We took a group picture together today with bandannas, which was pretty silly. But remember, it's all for science! Here's me with my pretty bandanna! :D

Grinding that 8-5 Work Day

Same thing happen today. Today I woke up at 7, got ready, and left to work on my long board. Today we learned about more stuff, however this time, some of the stuff was really interesting! We started out with some basic EMPA and XRF, which are really useful characterization techniques that I will be most likely using the most. After that we learned about XPS, which is great but ehhhhh. Now, this is where the good stuff comes in. We learned about Electrochemical Intercalation, which is really interesting because we can make smart windows with it--Windows that can adjust chemical composition with electricity. This means we could block IR light from the sun to keep houses cold or black them out with a flip of a switch. We then moved learning about excel with was boring (Props to Doctor Skip for teaching me well). The last lecture we did today was about how to give a scientific talk, which was really helpful. At lunch I went to get my lab keys and card, which I can’t wait to set up my desk next week. After lunch, we spun thin films and decide to test them with XRR, XDR, Ellipsometry, and UV-Vis with the solutions. That was about my day. This week takes a lot of time and energy out of me. I mean, I hardly have time for video games. UGHHHHH. Science comes first in my life, so I don’t mind too much….

Second Day on the Job!

Woke up at seven and got ready for my second day. Today, I skate boarded to the University of Oregon, which was a long ways from where I live. What the heck was I thinking? So this week will be the same format. I sit and learn stuff about thin films from nine to twelve, have lunch, and then head to the lab to do experiments. Today I learned/reviewed about thin films, unit cells, spin coating, properties of thin films, XRD, XRR, Ellipsometry, and of course, the almighty SEM. It was a lot of learning and they provided free coffee, so I kept drinking coffee during the whole thing. At the end of the lectures, I’m pretty sure I had too much coffee because I made it to Qdoba in two minutes. After lunch, my group started talking about thin films and what to do as an experiment. We decide to do something... (Sorry! Can't reveal experiments). Today we just finished the thin films and tomorrow we will decide what kind of characterization test we will use. But lastly, my team and I had to take a selfie! Trust me, it was for an experiment... ;)

Day 1

Today was my first day at my internship at the University of Oregon. Dave Johnson forgot to tell me what time to come in for my internship, so I decide eight A.M was a good time, which I was perfectly right. In the morning, we had to figure out what I was going to do since my graduate mentor was away at a conference in Chicago. Doctor Dave decided to throw me into a week long training called SMaRT camp (Sustainable Materials and Research Training Camp). The first day of SMaRT camp, we sat down and learned about Metal-Oxo Clusters. When learning about this Metal-Oxo Cluster, we discussed the structure, dimension, aqua ligands, thermodynamic driving forces, solubility, and charge density of metal cation in Metal-Oxo Cluster. We also reviewed characterization techniques such as IR spectrums  (FTIR and RAMAN), DLS, and UV-Vis.

The Second part of the day, we started making thin films by heating up a solution Tungsten. We took several samples when heat it up to characterization. So that sums up my day. I have yet to figure out what my research project and paper will be about. I have a hunch it's about kinects of thin films... Time will tell...