(no subject)

[phthalombrage]

Now, officially, the TRIP steel oxidation gas leak project is not something I will be working on this summer. Instead I am working with mystery coal slag samples (my partner has 40% petcoke) from an unidentified gasifier in a secretive national lab, trying to determine their compositions (given practically no information) so we can work on a new TTT diagram for these slags. The way I can explain this to my mom is that "I use a lot of microscopes." It's true. I've been doing SEM/EDS, a little boring optical and stereoscope work, and this week we've begun running the confocal laser microscope with supervision. Wednesday I watched a TEM training session, mostly to get a feel for what TEM work looks like. I got to use the diffractometer once before the x-ray tube got fried (not my fault, yesss!) and learned how to analyze the peaks with software, acquainted myself with a wonderful device called an autopolisher, sputter-coated a couple SEM samples with platinum, and I spent a couple fine summer days cooped up in the chokingly dusty air of the undergrad labs computer room making crystalmaker models (then simulated diffraction patterns) of expected oxide phases and mullite. Sometimes I also read papers, and once or twice a week I try to go to lunch seminars that talk about science, ethics, or professional development, mostly because I get free food in the case of the prof. dev. talks. I may or may not have a slot in the environmental SEM training session next week? It's cool because it has a low vacuum, which means less restrictive sample prep.

Our supervisor is a postdoc, and she is badass. She knows what she is doing. Her husband worked on similar projects to this when he was at CMU, too, and she was excited to identify phases in the slag that corroborated his findings in a paper the aforementioned national lab had shaken its head at in disbelief for eight months.

The only problem is that the girl from Chatham doesn't understand a lot of stuff, but thinks she is fine. She's also terrifyingly less-than-cautious around expensive equipment, so even if they do offer an SEM training session, they might keep having me do SEM/EDS analysis all her samples. She couldn't focus the optical scope properly, forgot to save the files with peaks for her XRD, and did so many things wrong in her confocal session today that I got to leave early and was told that if there continued to be problems, I might be in charge of pretty much all data acquisition.

There is always stuff to do, and the first few uses of fancy equipment is nerve-wracking. Similarly stressful is babysitting my partner. It also sucks when equipment doesn't work properly, especially when there are no funds and/or means to fix it soon. So many tiny things cost small fortunes (ha). But I am learning a lot, and by the end of the summer, I should have some useful skills and possibly be able to work on a paper and/or hire myself out as a microscope-monkey in the fall.

Comments

[professorsparks.livejournal.com]

ON A COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE

I approve of the new...buddy icon? Profile picture? Whatever it is. Yeah. Also, sorry for ditchin' earlier, but I had to go set computerz up with Gabe. Thanks for the cakemuffin =D

[joyful-vydra.livejournal.com]

autopolisher <3

What happened when I worked for Seetharaman is that my data collection work got incorporated into a larger paper without my having to do any real drawing of conclusions or writing, and my partner and I got to fight for first author. So you will probably get a paper out of this summer as well as the skills to do more research in the fall. Seetharaman is pretty cool like that.

[t-moss.livejournal.com]

about the same for me...except it was 5 papers...

isn't it fun working with a postDoc?!

I hope you have fun working on this, working for seetharaman on the confocal stuff was probably my best undergrad research experience.