Day 2 - So Much Soup

Hi again!

Much has happened since we last spoke. Yesterday I went to work for the first time in the Perlman Chemical Sciences Building, on the fourth floor: Materials and Interfaces. I met the other researchers in my group, including PhD and post-doc students. The PhDs gave me a tour of the labs, then took me out for lunch.

After lunch I met my professor, David Wagner. He asked me to review my resume for him, then told me what he wants me to do: make a huge catalogue of TEM images of carbon nanotubes, of various diameters and numbers of walls, and attempt to determine the thickness of graphene sheets in the nanotubes. I also am aiming to determine whether this thickness has any dependence on the radius or number of sheets in the nanotube. In the future, if I discuss this in any depth, I will warn you all so if you are non-sciencey, you can tune out. I will of course also let you know when to tune back in.

Anyways, after that I spent the rest of the afternoon printing and reading papers. Around 4, Noa, one of the PhD students, took me to the ESEM (Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope) and I watched her look at her electrospun epoxy samples. After a bit I left.

I was so tired when I got back that I napped until after dinner time. I woke up and arrived in the kitchen as Jonathan, one of the other summer students, finished a huge pot of soup. He forced me to help him eat it. The rest of the night was spent talking and chilling on the roof. Topics ranged from furniture porn to how to meet people here (one answer: sit in the lobby and eat salad all the time). There were a bunch of summer students as well as other building residents, including masters and PhD students from pretty much everywhere. Eventually a security guard showed up and told us to keep it quiet.

Today will come later. For now, enjoy pictures of campus buildings! In order, top to bottom: the coolest particle accelerator building ever, the Chemical Sciences Building (where I work), and my dorm (where I live).