Day 6

In the morning, I attended a lecture on magnetic field assembly of Janus and patchy particles which, despite its odd name, proved to be very interesting. The speaker essentially summarized her research on partially-coated particles produced via the method of deposition, although the intriguing part was how these particles reacted when introduced to a magnetic field versus an electric field. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the lecture I understood even though it was aimed at graduate students; I had sufficient background for everything except the monstrously frightening physics portion.

Afterwards, I returned to normal lab life by going through the arduous process of preparing new prime layers on silicon wafers. Of all the chemicals and tools I worked with, of course I ended up injuring myself on tinfoil, an innocent household item. It wasn't a particularly serious wound, just a cut I sustained on my arm, but I now know to exercise caution around dangerous items like foil that are used for wrapping sandwiches, drying silicon wafers, and other such typical purposes.

Once I had recovered from this traumatic experience, I set to work adjusting the pH of approximately ten million solutions. This is necessary but mind-numbing work, and I was greatly relieved when the long, painful process was over and I could actually use those solutions to assist in contact angle measurements.

Up until this point, I hadn't used the ellipsometer, something quite rare for me on Wednesdays, but the reprieve did not last long, for at this point, the ellipsometer and I met again. The wafers I synthesized prime layers on earlier were ready to be taken from the oven and measured. Luckily, the ellipsometer was friendly and cooperative, and the computer didn't even crash on me when I was updating the Excel sheet with my new data.

Day 5

I attended a student research conference, which was a chance for those in a particular scholars' program, like the undergraduate I work with, to put their research on display via posters. The conference actually opened with a talk given by a woman who co-founded a relatively successful start-up, but although there were some interesting points made during her lecture, I found myself disagreeing with some of what she was saying, and as a whole, I didn't really like the way she presented herself. This is, of course, very subjective so this is just my opinion.

The rest of the conference was a good opportunity to look at different types of research being conducted since the posters varied in topic. Not all of them were chemistry -- there were a lot on computer science, for example, as well as physics research. I did notice that not a lot of people did biology work, which I suppose makes sense given the strengths and emphases of the school at hand.

Day 4

I was ill, and did not report to internship. I'm sure I was dearly missed.

Day 3

Having finished charting the growth regime of my original sample, I now turned to creating the same kind of sample again to see if the growth regime is replicated. This meant essentially repeating the same long process I suffered through the previous two weeks, i.e. taking care of the silicon wafers, preparing many solutions as they were in dire need of replenishment (and making some extra too because I was in a good and charitable mood), and going through the arduous task of depositing bilayers through the same layer-by-layer assembly method.

Since I didn't have any extra random samples to play around with, that meant that there was a lot of waiting time. For the first time, I was actually excited to use the ellipsometer to take measurements because it meant I didn't have to stand over my samples, staring at invisible layers  forming (this is, essentially, the scientific equivalent of watching grass grow, except you can't even see the grass.) I also became an expert at adjusting the pH of stock solutions without having to spend a laborious hour watching the pH tortuously swing from 5.45 to 5.55 and back again over and over until it finally hits the magic 5.50.

For the first time, however, I started to feel really independent in terms of the work I was doing, or at least I was under the impression I had developed some degree of competency - always a good thing. I no longer needed to ask ten times in a row where the methanol is kept, nor did I need help interpreting the Russian labels on all the bottles (apparently labeling things in the language of the country you are in is unheard of.) I even grew used to the multilingual environment around me - an environment, I might add, that does not include English. But it was nice to be able to do things on my own, and that in itself made my 3rd day of internship a good one.