Presentations, Day 1

Maria Magdalena: "Low Frequency Vibrations of Trans-Stilbene"

Onur: "Least Concave Utility Functions"

Anna: "Costly Nash Paths"

Andrey: "False Discovery Rate in Case of Small Number of False Hypotheses"

Jessica: "The Mechanisms of the Pro-Migratory Function of Synaptojanin-2 and its Role in Actin Rearrangement and Extracellular Membrane Remodeling during Invasion"

Oren: "Modeling Magnetization Transfer NMR of Semi-Solid Biological Tissues under Magic Angle Spinning"

Ivonne: "Interaction of Pluoronic Blocks Copolymers with Single Wall Nanotubes Observed by Spin Probe EPR"

Marina: "Reversible Charge Separation Followed Exciplex Formation"

Erin: "Characterization of a Naturally Occurring Single Gene Mutation in Barley and the Role of Silicon"

Jonathan: "Evolution of Transcription Factor Binding Sites"

Joel: "An Investigation of Anisotropic Stochastic Dynamics: Mean First Passage Time for a Random Rod to Rotate in a Confined Domain"

Daniel: "Transcriptional Regulation of the Oncogene miR-373 by Mutant Forms of p53"

Rachel: "The Role of BDNF in Antidepressant Treatments"

Me: "Determination of the Thickness of Graphitic Planes in Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes using Transmission Electron Microscopy"

Maciej: "Calculation of the Feed-Downs to the Meson Transverse Momentum Spectra Measured in PHENIX Experiment at RHIC, BNL"

Oren and his magic!

Joel speaking about how a random walk is similar to being drunk, 

something he enjoys as much as exploring fundamental scientific principles

Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to snap photos of Jonathan and his worms 

(Brigsey, Gramps, and the other one, I think...), which were beautifully drawn

Day 67 - A Musical and Philosophical Evening

I woke up slightly early this morning to go to the front gate and meet Eli, my family's guide. I got in his van just as he was getting through the gate; evidently he didn't need my help with that. We drove to San Martin, where I helped my family get their luggage down to the van and such for a few minutes before I had to head to work.

After dropping my stuff off in the lab and grabbing my samples, I headed to the TEM for our last session with Talmon. Patro and I had gotten a taste of working on the microscope last session with alignment procedures, but this time, with supervision, Patro basically did the entire procedure. He took some images, then turned the machine over to me to do the same. Talmon told me just after this that I was ready to operate the TEM without supervision!!!

Just before lunchtime I found myself grabbing my final forms and heading to the library for a signature (the department secretary's I had gotten first, and I had miraculously happened to run into Nissim after hours for his, so the librarian's was the last I needed). I then went straight to Cafe Madaa to meet Tamara and Dan for sandwiches. Tamara and I split a piece of cake that was chocolate and spiky and wonderful.

During the afternoon I managed to finish a draft of my abstract, as well as work on my presentation and write-up of my summer. I worked straight until 6, when I left and headed to Clore for an event arranged by Greta. We sat around and watched as she spread out some snacks and food, then at 6:30 went into the music room for a musical evening put on by the Russian summer students, Anya, Marina, and Andre. They made programs listing the songs we'd be hearing, and played the piano and violin (Anya on violin, the others on piano) for almost an hour! All of them were amazing, and the music room was packed, with summer students and Weizmann students from Clore.

Marina and Andrew each played an encore before we all headed back out to the lobby for snacks, fruit, and ice cream homemade by Greta, which was delicious. I couldn't hold back, and ate a few helpings of it. Then Daniela, Rachel and I headed out for dinner to the science park. Once there, we looked at menus at a few restaurants before finally settling on Papardella, an Italian (and Kosher) restaurant. Both Daniela and I ordered gnocci, with different sauces, and Rachel, who had had a craving for corn, had brought her own can of it, so semi-secretly ate it when our meals arrived. The restaurant was nice, although it didn't have its own bathroom on the premises (there was one labeled with the restaurant's name around the corner). Also, as is shown below, the cute ambiance of the terrace was overshadowed by a towering sign for the neighboring gas station.

After eating, we just sat and talked for a couple of hours, about religion, which always seems to come up when Rachel is present. The interesting thing is that Judaism was only a part this time. Daniela shared some really interesting experiences from her year in Africa, and as it turns out, she's rather spiritual. We also talked about reincarnation, and how it's mentioned in Judaism not just in arcane texts but in the daily prayer to be said before bed. The weather was actually rather cool, so it was a pleasant evening to just sit and chat.

After the walk back, we said goodbye to Daniela outside Clore and headed in. Rachel and I ate a bit of ice cream and chatted with physics Dan in the kitchen. I retired once my eyes wouldn't stay open.

Here are a few pictures from this evening:

The program:

Marina playing

Anya on violin, Andre on piano

The Entertainer (piano, four hands)

What a crowd!

Me, Daniela, and Rachel under the Sonol sign

Day 59 - Rachel's Chavayah

Especially compared to yesterday, today at work was not too exiciting. The one exception to this statement was that it was Noa's birthday (Happy Birthday!!!), so her mom made amazingly delicious brownies for everyone. It was hard, but I managed to eat only one before lunch. I worked pretty diligently all morning, then found myself back at San Martin for lunch, and sat with Dan, Alissa, Ari, and, very notably, Stephen! He basically never joins us for lunch, especially at San Martin (he has been spotted at Charlie's from time to time), so he was a welcomed addition to our party.

After lunch, I ate one more brownie and managed to be as productive as I had been in the morning, which is a major feat. A visit from Asaf also broke up the afternoon. We watched a few YouTube videos of climbers doing ridiculous things, before they got too dangerous and I had to close the window.

After staying as late as I could, I knocked on Rachel's door back at Clore to let her know we had some time before we had to leave for Tel Aviv, and that I was going to have a snack. She said she'd join me, and offered me the contents of what can only be described as the world's largest fruit basket, which her mother had sent her. I tried sabre, dragon fruit, and fig, interspersed with yellow watermelon, pineapple, nectarine, and white melon. We took some pictures with her camera to show her mom of us enjoying the fruit. It was all delicious!

Around 6:30 I went to change and grab my stuff, then Rachel and I walked out the main gate towards the train station. Before we had gotten very far, though, I got a text from Anna (who is back in Israel, and was going to meet us at Performance Rock) saying her boyfriend Peri was driving from Rehovot to Tel Aviv to meet her and would be leaving soon, and could probably give us a ride. After calling him and arranging to meet him right outside the gate at the bus stop in 10 minutes, Rachel and I sat and chilled and discussed that in Israel, things which would elsewhere be risky or dangerous or gross or, well, anything can be considered an "experience," or "chavayah." This came up especially in the context of hitchhiking, in light of a recent, unexpectedly ridiculous ride which she had had from the North back to Jerusalem this past weekend.

Soon Peri called and told me he was close by, so we went back outside the gate to wait. Someone who looked sort of like Peri pulled up, rolled down the window, and sat there in front of us for a few minutes. Rachel and I quietly discussed how embarrasing it would be if this were actually him, but luckily the real Peri pulled up soon and stopped right in front of him. We got in and were off. On the way to Tel Aviv we discussed Anna and climbing, before the conversation shifted to other things, like Peri's army service and current status (student, in mechanical engineering). Then Peri asked us what we though of Israel. Rachel had spent a year here before, but this was my first extended period of time here, so the focus was on me. It felt sort of like the third degree; when I said I liked it, he wanted to really get at the reasons why. Rachel wasn't surprised by this, though, and said Israelis always want reasons as to whether or not people like it here.

We reached Tel Aviv rather quickly; there was little traffic. Parking wasn't hard to come by, and we entered Performance Rock, which turned out to be very crowded. Rachel, who is pretty religious (and therefore not really used to shirtless guys falling off of walls in every direction), took one look through the door into the bouldering area and said, "Oh yeah, this is going to be a chavayah." We paid and entered, and I rummaged a bit to find matching shoes of the correct size for her. I then started her on the Vos, which she had absolutely no problem with, and a few V1s. Peri had never been here before, so he was off exploring the routes, and soon Anna arrived. I showed her what I'd been working on lately, because all of the routes had changed since she had last been.

After a bit, Tamara and Mena also arrived. The crowd was gradually thinning, so we were able to climb everything we wanted. Anna finished everything I showed her, and Rachel finished all the V0s and all but one of the V1s. The trouble this one route gave her I attribute to fatigue combined with her first time climbing, because if she goes there again, she'll definitely get it. Tamara and I worked on a problem partially in the cave, and found a new way to work through the middle of it, but still have a ways to go. She also made a bit of progress on the last move of another problem, but still can't quite get it. I finally completed a V2, the last move of which had been giving me issues. It felt good to finally check it off the list.

As 10 pm approached, the manager, who had fitted me for my harness and whom I had told when I came in that something was causing it to be uncomfortable, asked me to try it on again for him. He saw what I was talking about, that the leg loops were sort of digging in to me, and showed me how to adjust the straps connecting them to the back of the waist part to make them more even and aligned with my thighs. Hopefully this will make the harness more comfortable! After this, Tamara, Rachel and I decided to head out. We said goodbye to Anna, and thanked Peri again for the ride, then walked to the bus station where we caught a sherut back to Rehovot. I hung out for a bit, then went to bed.

Day 57 - Back to school, sort of

The beginning of my third-to-last work week began like many previously: with coffee at Cafe Madaa. I had to leave before Zvonimir, Tanmay and Clay did, to get to the lab and drop off my stuff before heading to Wolfson with Patro.

< .science >

We then had our first TEM class with Talmon! The purpose of this first session was for him to give us a very in-depth introduction to the microscope, including details about each lens, aperture, valve, pressure gauge, and vacuum pump. I always knew it was a very complex piece of equipment, and Talmon has been telling me about it little by little during our sessions, but only in response to my questions, and I don't know everything to ask. It was also helpful for him to be able to make all sorts of adjustments to demonstrate things as we went along; most of this was stuff you can't do with a sample in there, so it was mostly new to me.

< / science >

Anyways, I took about 8 pages of notes, including annotated diagrams. It was very jam-packed, but hopefully if I review it all it will sink in. Patro and I headed back to Perlman afterwards, luckily early enough for me to head straight to San Martin, where I sat with Anna and Onur. Back at the lab, I continued work on my presentation, and ended staying at work until very late (around 8:30 pm). When I was happy--or as happy as I was going to be--with the powerpoint, I decided to call it a night, and headed back to Clore.

When I got back, Dan, Ari, Stephen and I headed out for dinner. This was a banner evening: Stephen's FIRST TIME AT HERTZL BAR! I got shakshouka, which was delicious but since I was so hungry, I didn't wait for it to cool fully and really burned the roof of my mouth. Stephen ordered a mixed drink consisting of coffee and Kahluah, and it was delicious. Dan got an Irish coffee (coffee and Bailey's), which turned out to not be delicious at all. In general, though, the service was slightly faster than usual, and everything was yummy.

Back at Clore, the "party" was in Ari's room. I grabbed my computer to catch up on some blogging, while chatting with Ari, Dan, Zvonimir, and Oren. I don't know how it started, but I got into a sort of shouting match with Zvonimir on the subject of Macs versus PCs, which was very silly but somehow made a lot of sense at the time. At some point Joel came in. His family is visiting this week, so he was with his little sister Barbara. While I would have liked to hang out with them more, I was tired and sort of cranky by this point, so I lingered only a few minutes more, enough to promise Barbara her first tag (and here it is!), before going to bed.

Day 37 - A case of the Mondays?

This morning the summer students had a talk/tour of the "submicron" building on campus. We met in the lobby at 9:00 am and a man named Nissim introduced himself, gave a brief description of the phenomenon of interference, and then took us on a tour of the upper floor.

< .science >

This included many clean rooms where various lithographies are performed (optical, photo- and e-beam) as well as his lab, where he tests samples at 10 micro-Kelvin. Brrr.

Afterwards, Maciej and I stuck around to ask some questions, me about why this building falls under the category of physics and not materials science, and Maciej about the quantum Hall effect. Nissim answered, then showed us some more equipment, like the chamber for performing molecular beam epitaxy and a JEOL electron microscope with 40-nm etching resolution, before we said our goodbyes and headed off to work.

< / science >

Pretty much as soon as I sat down and began working on more images, Professor Wagner came in and said the following, which I quote verbatim because it was highly amusing/devastating (depending upon your state of mind...me, I began the day in a good mood):

"We need to meet later, do you have some time, because I don't understand everything you did."

I think he meant that he understood some things but not everything. Or maybe by "think" I mean "hope." Whatever the case, this reconjured my nerves from yesterday, so I told him I was "relatively free," which I meant as a joke because of course all I'd be doing all day was image processing and data manipulation. He smiled and told me "late afternoon." Goody.

So I worked, then went to lunch at San Martin, meeting Ari, Zvonimir, Anya, Onur, Jordan, and later Joel. It was nice to shoot the breeze for a bit, but I was still stressed, so I headed to Stone cafeteria for an ice cream bar, and chatted with Nitzan and a friend of his. I then returned to work and continued processing. Until 7 pm. When I decided to pop my head in and see if this was the time he had in mind to meet. He told me he didn't have time, but that I wasn't doing what he wanted. Huh. So I grabbed my notebook and we discussed it. Turns out it's not so bad; I have the data he wants, but wasn't plotting the right parameters. Anyways that is how I will spend tomorrow morning, certainly.

Shortly after this meeting I left work. When I returned to Clore, I blogged in the kitchen, which bothered Zvonimir until he discovered he was being mentioned. I also chatted with Ben online and with Rachel, and after a bit we decided we wanted pizza. Jordan and Jonathan had just returned from frisbee and decided to come with us. We walked down Hertzl until we came across a kosher place (surprisingly, the first two didn't satisfy this condition), and ordered slices. Soon Dan and Maciej joined us, and we would have pushed the tables together to form one big happy group had they not been bolted to the wall.

On the way back, we stopped in a convenience store to purchase tasty beverages for the evening (Zvonimir had given me some of his money for this express purpose), then set everything down in the piano room in Clore and hung out until people began arriving for the party. Around 11:00, people really began to stick around, and soon after someone broke out a guitar and people stopped playing the piano. I hung around for a good while then headed to bed.

Day 27 - Wasting time in virtual spaces

I woke up this morning to the lovely sound of Ari knocking on my door at 12:15.  He wanted to get lunch, and kindly granted me 15 minutes in which to get ready.  I showered, got dressed, and grabbed my stuff in only 12.  It was apparently very impressive.

We ran into Clay in the lobby, so waited 2 minutes for him to put away his stuff so he could come with us.  Ari wanted to try the dining places on campus, but all the subsidized ones (Jubilee, San Martin, and Charlie's Place) were closed.  The restaurant at the Visitor's Center was open, however, so we decided to eat there.  We ran into Zvonimir having some coffee, so he ordered another one and hung out with us.  After a bit Ari left a bit early to catch his train to Haifa for the weekend.

When we got back to Clore, I chatted with Carina (!) for the third time in four days, or something ridiculous like that.  It was great!  Carina, if you are reading this, I am waiting for that report...it's due on my desk by MONDAY.

Anyways, Anya came down to the kitchen to find me.  It was time for our shopping date!  We walked along Hertzl Street, stopping in any shop that held the possibility for cute summer dresses, the objects of our quest.  The first place we entered turned out to be the most promising, but since it was fist, we tried on oodles of stuff and then moved on.  We found ourselves empty-handed, until we found some cute and cheap socks at one of the places along Hertzl.  As neither of us had brought enough, we both got three pairs.  We worked our way down all the way to the mall, but by the time we reached it, most things were closing.  The pharmacy was still open, though, so I bought an ace bandage.

We were both glad, after the walk back, to reach air conditioning.  As we parted, the protocol to exchange some sort of contact information was fulfilled in that Anya told me she was now on facebook, and went up to her room and friended me.  Oh the joys of facebook.  

I went down to grab my computer, and ended up joining Zvonimir in the lobby.  Asaf had called me when we were out, asking about my ankle and wanting to exchange some music.  So I called him back and told him we were chilling in the lobby.  I put a bunch of stuff on his thumb drive, and we sampled some Dane Cook, because he had mentioned a love for Mitch Hedberg.  Of course this launched a YouTube visit, because Dane Cook is better when you can see him.  And this one video precipitated an entire afternoon spend watching YouTube videos.  It was amazing.  We were joined on and off by Dan and Jordan, and later permanently by Joel, but our core group of three spent some embarrassing number of hours showing each other clips from comedians, imitators, Christopher Walken reading The Three Little Pigs, and other amazing stuff.

Asaf had a hankering for a hamburger, and since we had seen Nina, Dave, and a bunch of others heading to Hertzl Bar, we decided to go change and join them.  We sat, Asaf and Zvonimir ordering hamburgers, and were joined by Asaf's friend Amir.  I got edamame (steamed soybeans in the pod) for the table, which were a hit!  Somewhere in the middle of the meal Asaf decided we needed to call Nitzan and Yaron, but only had Yaron's number.  I, therefore, called Nitzan, breaking our no-call streak and ruining both our hopes for Beijing.  He said he could come in about an hour, so we finished up our meal and went back to Clore.  Joel broke out some tasty beverages and we chilled for a bit.  Eventually Nitzan showed up, as well as Yaron and Rotem, his fiance.  Iris also hung out with us, which was great because she will be a sophomore at Penn this year, so we have lots we can talk about.

We left Clore, at which point Yaron and Rotem headed home.  Our intention was to head to the Irish pub near Hertzl Bar, but our hopes were dashed when they didn't have a table large enough for the group.  Another place had a 35 shekel minimum per person, not appealing to those of us (*raises hand*) who would not be consuming two beers.  So we returned to the old standby, Hertzl Bar, where we got a large enough table and weren't forced to order a preset amount.  We got more edamame, too.  It was a banner day for soybeans.  

After sitting and chatting for a couple of hours, we all went back to Clore and from there some went their separate ways.  All in all, a good day.

For those of you with picture cravings, 

enjoy one of Anya and I shopping...

Day 25 - Radially symmetric invertebrates

Work today was spent mostly processing images, adding the data to my growing excel file, and adjusting the plots to include the new points. The trends I'm seeing aren't changing shape, but the standard deviations are becoming smaller, which is nice. Yay for large sample sizes!

Exciting things today included lunch with XiaoMeng, her friend, and Asaf at San Martin and the math department cookie break, which I crashed because my eyes were starting to water from all the image examination. I went to Ran's cubicle at 3:25, then headed over to the lounge with him at 3:30. Apparently there was no hot water for the coffee or tea, but Jonathan had gone up a floor to get hot water for his tea, so he slurped it extremely loudly for the entire half hour I was there in an effort to inspire jealousy in the other warm drink seekers. I went back to my building to get my camera, then came back to Ran's cubicle room to record the contrasting images displayed below. Before leaving, he gave me a gift: a small porcelain figure of a fighter in purple robes wielding a yellow bat. His explanation was that he used to have twelve, 6 on either side, but someone took one from the other side so I was helping him re-achieve symmetry. I said I'd borrow it for the summer, for my unadorned desk.

After work, I went back to Clore to grab a bathing suit and towel, then met everyone in the San Martin parking lot. We all got on a bus for our first official KKISS trip, to the beach at Ashdod, also a huge port city. I sat next to Erin on the way there, which made for some interesting, and rather politically charged, conversation. We got there in about a half hour, and after helping deposit all the food in a central location, most of us headed to the nearby beach and took a dip. The water was warm and there were waves, but there was trash in the water, and many of us received minor jellyfish stings (except Claudia, whose sting was slightly worse than minor). I swam with Lisa and learned the basics of her life story, and helped prevent her from exiting the water with makeup dripping down her face. We got out and everyone photographed the group and the sunset. I met and chatted with Maria, a relatively new member of our program, after we examined a huge jellyfish which had washed up on shore. Finally, we headed back to the food, where Greta was finishing the grilling.

We ate pita, salad, cold cuts and grilled hot dogs as we dried off. Greta had told us this would be a "light meal," but most of us were stuffed by the time she brought out the fruit and marshmallows. Someone had assembled a pile of dry wood on the other side of the beach before we arrived, which was then lit as soon as darkness fell. Many of us headed over to the bonfire to dry off and attempt to roast the marshmallows. The latter task proved challenging, but eventually we rigged a system by which we insterted our small wooden skewers into the tip of a much longer piece of scrap wood, so that the marshmallow could reach the fire without the person wielding it having to get too close to the fire.

Eventually we headed back, grabbed the leftover food and dry goods, and packed up the bus. I sat with Lisa on the way back. When we got back to campus and unpacked the bus, I noticed that the driver had a bed and clothesline underneath the bus. Innnnteresting.

We walked back to Clore and as everyone wanted to shower, there was quite a backup. I hung out with Stephen and Jonathan as they got ready to go out; I was still undecided as to whether I'd join. Alissa and I watched the remainder of the Germany/Turkey game, and she decided to go to bed. I showered and was on my way out of Clore when I ran into Stephen on his way back. We decided to get an ice cream, and at the convenience store struck up what ended up being an hour-long conversation, in Hebrew, with another patron. The best part, though, was that I think I understood a good portion of it! Eventually, I reached the point where I was tired enough that I had to leave. As soon as I got back to my room I went to bed.

The whiteboard in the cubicle next to Ran's:

observe the math content

Ran's whiteboard:

observe the pirate ship, mountains, desert island, and pokemon

Left to right:

Tamara, Ivonne, Lisa, Anya, Andre, Claudia, and Maria Magdalena

Jonathan, before the application of the idea to use a longer stick

Ari and Zvonomir

Tamara, Joel, Lisa and Alissa

Erin with the spare meat some random dude gave us

Day 24 - And the winner is...

Woke up early again today (but not as early as yesterday) to get to the lab and grab my samples before meeting Talmon for a TEM session at 9 am. We worked until 1 pm and I got some great data, but we only looked at 3 samples! Not only did we get a lot of images which are perfect for my processing, but we found some really cool-looking nanotubes, one of which can be found at the end of this post.

Anyways, I had missed lunch again, but Anna had texted me during my TEM session about grabbing some food, so I called her on my way back to the lab. She said she'd grab a cab to the front gate, so I dropped my stuff off and went to meet her. She was literally stepping out of the cab as I got there, which was great timing. We walked about two blocks down so I could get some delicious falafel, and since Anna had been sort of snacking all morning, she just grabbed some sorbet. We chatted about a whole range of things, including how when people (/boyfriends) reliably go the extra mile, it's hard not to get frustrated (although it's totally unfounded) when they fail you that one time (in this case, not putting a lactaid pill in Anna's wallet for her because she always forgets), roommates and messiness, and other random topics.

We re-entered campus through Clore house, and as we approached my building ran into Doron wearing a sort of cowboy hat. We chatted for a few minutes, but it was too hot for more, so I went to work, Doron continued towards the cafeteria for his late lunch, and Anna went in search of internet so she could practice chess openings on her laptop. Hopefully we'll get together again before she leaves on Tuesday!

I began processing the new TEM images in the afternoon, and left around 5:30. I changed into climbing stuff and blogged/etc in the Clore lobby until it was almost time to go climbing. I had organized a train trip to the bouldering place in Tel Aviv, and ended up accompanied by Tanmay, Tamara, Michael, another guy from soccer, Jordan, and Jordan's friend. We left at 7 but missed the 7:16 train by about 30 seconds, so we hung out to wait for the 7:38 one. From the Tel Aviv Hahagana stop, we walked the 10-15 minutes and arrived at Performance Rock. It's not a huge place, and Dave, Nina, and her two friends from Germany were there waiting for us, so Weizmann people might possibly have outnumbered all others.

I showed everyone the beginner routes and gave some tips to those new to climbing, and eventually started working on some new stuff with Tamara, which was really fun. Towards the end of the night we made up a really interesting traverse route, the last move of which neither of us could manage. It was a successful trip. We left a bit late to catch the 10:12 train, and the next one was at 11, so we went straight to the central bus station and practically filled a shuttle back to Rehovot. Some interesting religious discussions occurred during the ride back, which will be discussed another time, and I tried to listen to both simultaneously.

When we got back, those of us who hadn't eaten yet grabbed some pizza and then returned to Clore. There was a group of people chatting in the lobby, which was fun but which eventually turned into a smaller, summer-student version of the gathering relocated in the kitchen. Stephen, Joel, Ari, Jordan, and even Jonathan brought their laptops out, and we had an amusing time. Highlights included showing Jonathan his first ever complete episode of The Office ("Diversity Day," for those interested), and a major overhaul of my blog tagging system to correct the many omissions of Joel tags, one of Jonathan's, and the revision to organize the "Labels" sidebar by label frequency (not in alphabetical order), to facilitate competition among my friends here for "most tagged." It was very dramatic but now that it's easier to see who's winning, I feel sure people will hang out with me more just to be mentioned here and then consequently labeled.

Work pictures today...an unusual coil-shaped nanotube!
"DANGER: Laser Radiation" (edit)

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...