Day 18 - Start at the very beginning

Today marks the second consecutive day I've arrived at work after 9 am. It is glorious thing. I think from now on, I will only mention notable things about work, as I find myself using the same words every day.

Ok, now that that's settled, something notable happened! At 11 am Dikla came in and told us a talk was about to begin and there weren't enough people there. XiaoMeng and I were the only ones sitting in the office, but she had a meeting elsewhere, so I decided to go alone. The speaker was someone from Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and he talked about a whole bunch of stuff, from solid state fuel cells to sensors, all in the context of microelectronics. To be quite honest, I don't even need the "science" tags, because it was way over my head, too. But even if it had been at a manageabl level, it still would have been relatively unexciting.

For lunch I met everyone in the square again, but this time the group had expanded to include someone from Clay's lab, Lior, and Tamara. We went to San Martin, the meat cafeteria where you can load as much on your plate as you can fit (which results in some interesting food sculptures). We ran into Claudia and Maria Magdalena in line, and Lisa and Dan (physics) joined our table after a while.

< .science >

After lunch, at 2 pm XiaoMeng and I headed over to Wolfson (the microscopy building) to add another coating to the TEM grids. This time it was a carbon layer, which conducts and therefore prevents the electrons from becoming trapped in the sample and causing charging. The apparatus consisted of a bell jar, a carbon filament holder, and a stage. XiaoMeng vented the cahmber, placed the grids (still on paper from the polymer coating) on the stage and strategically and scientifically weighted down the paper edges with old metal nuts. She then replaced the carbon filament from a roll of filament, tightened it, and resealed the chamber. After venting, she ran a current through the filament, instantly vaporizing the center of it. The chamber immediately dispersed the carbon evenly throughout it, effectively depositing a thin carbon coating over the polymer on the grids.

As with anything that sounds awesome (like vaporization), this was rather anticlimactic. In one second it was done, then she vented the chamber once more. As I told her, I always get excited for this stuff and then am sort of sad when it's not an epic, visible reaction. Once in p-chem lab, we did bomb calorimetry. Literally we're exploding a bomb of our sample, multiple times, so I expected movement, or a visible quiver or muffled boom, but all we got was a little red LED light to tell us it was over. Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed.

< / science >

As I walked back to the lab, I pondered the most recent plot I had constructed of my data. Something was really bugging me about a very clear trend that was present, so I resolved to check exactly what I had done to create it. After looking at it for a minute, I reached the unhappy conclusion that the trend was completely a product of my automated measurement method. And then, being as anal as I am, I decided that the only way to show this for sure would be to recreate all of the data by hand and see if the trend remained. So basically, I started over again, this time taking manual measurements.

After about 3 hours I realized what time it was and left work. I had hypothetical plans to go bouldering with Anna, a girl from New York City who I had met at the top-roping gym on Sunday. I called her and we arranged to meet at the Tel Aviv train station nearest to the gym. In the kitchen back at the dorm, I invited Ari and Jonathan to accompany me. After pondering it for a bit, they both decided to come! We caught the 7:38 train from Rehovot, arriving at the Hahagana station in Tel Aviv at 8:00. Anna called me to tell me she was running late and would meet us there, so we started walking without her.

It was an interesting part of town, so I was glad I had recruited others to accompany me on the walk. About 15 minutes later we found it, with the help of my hand-drawn map (which of course I had printed, in color, at work and then intelligently left on my desk). When we paid to get in, there was no change, so the man behind the counter recorded his debts to us and we went in. The guys both changed into shorts, I put on my shoes, then I helped them try to find matching shoes to borrow from the large bin of them. Then I gave them a brief introduction to bouldering and we began.

They both knocked off the V0s relatively easily, but the V1s were more challenging. As we climbed I gave them a few pointers and occasionally demonstrated some moves. Both of them got very pumped pretty quickly, so I advised that they slow down. Soon, Anna called me to ask if she was nearby. I went outside and it turned out she was walking towards me from the other side of the street, so she successfully found us. She was dressed for a party at synagogue, though, so she changed and began to climb with us. She and I climb at almost exactly the same level, so it was really great to tackle the problems together. She told me the best advice she had gotten out of a climbing course once: try to be as quiet as possible with your feet. I really like thinking about it that way!

We climbed literally until the place closed, then walked back to the train station and waited a bit for the train to Rehovot (Anna is staying there, too). On the platform we met an Israeli girl our age who had recently returned from a year's stay in New Jersey! We sat with her and chatted all the way to Rehovot. She went to learn English, is the oldest of 13 children, and was recently accepted to an architecture program in Israel. When we got to Rehovot we exchanged phone numbers, so maybe we'll see her again!

As we walked back towards Weizmann, Anna redirected us to her friend Shaun's house. We met and drank some water, then headed out to the pub on Hertzel for a late dinner. Anna is obsessed with edamame, so we had some as an apetizer. After the meal we all parted ways, and just before Ari, Jonathan and I entered Clore, something icky fell from the sky onto my shoulder. Its identity remains unknown but Jonathan was kind enough to remove it.

Ari went to bed, but I showed Jonathan and Stephen (who was still awake!) The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (see my feeds, on the sidebar of this page), which is really amusing and which you should all check out, before going to bed myself.

Since you've all been suffering, enjoy a picture of the varied reactions of Jonathan and Anna to a french-fry machine on the train platform in Tel Aviv...