Day 24

We had an informative morning meeting in which Mr. Callens told us he had a arranged another Wednesday lunch talk, which I was very happy about. I think it's going to be a very interesting talk.

I continued work on our presentation. The slideshow is coming along pretty well, and I've been adding pictures to many of the slides. One big thing that we still need to finish is writing our actual talk that goes with the slides. 

Madi and I went on a really nice walk around campus during lunch. It was pretty relaxing, and I'm glad we got the chance to enjoy the nice weather.

Madi and I found motivation to work hard in the afternoon through a little stuffed hedgehog that we named Mo. (Yes, Mo is short for motivation).

Day 23

Today was the undergraduate research symposium, so there was no morning meeting for the interns. Instead, most of them went to the breakfast at the symposium. I didn't plan on going to the breakfast, so I had gone to the CIS first. When I decided to go find the other interns I ended up getting completely lost. Luckily, I had Emily's number and was able to find out where they were. I went and got my name tag, but then decided to go back to CIS and get more work done. I did go to one talk, which was by an RU from CIS. I had actually helped with his research earlier in the summer, when I brought in my violin and Madi and I played notes for him to record. His project was on music, which I found really interesting. I hope he continues his work because his project is so cool!
Lunch was fun, especially because they had a special gluten free sandwich for me and a gluten free cookie! The talk during lunch was really fascinating, and it was on a topic I'm really interested in: solar power.
I got some more work done in the afternoon, and all in all I had a very productive day.

Day 22

Zihao and I had a meeting in the morning with our adviser, Prof. Hornak. We talked for almost an hour and he helped us rearrange our presentation to be more interesting and to grab the attention of the audience. The tips he gave us were very helpful, and I'm pretty with how our presentation is coming together.
Other than that, today was fairly uneventful. At lunch, all the interns played a game of Apples to Apples, which was fun but everyone took it pretty seriously. I think it probably went a lot better than the game of Trivial Pursuit...

Day 21

In the morning, we took a quick trip to the library. We learned about all the different databases that can be used to find scholarly articles. There are databases dedicated to certain subjects like engineering or chemistry. I think these will be super useful for any research I need to do in the future.
I did some more work on our presentation, and I took a walk down to the color science building to participate in the cell phone camera study.
Today was the last day of the Wednesday lunch talks. It was on a specific lake and the surrounding area in Tanzania. The lake was very unique because the temperature at the bottom of the lake was higher than the temperature at the surface of the lake. This ultimately had to do with the fact that the lake was surrounded by volcanoes.
At around 3:30, we watched The Dark Knight (actually, we only watched about an hour of it because we ran out of time). I did homework while I half-watched the movie. Tomorrow we will probably finish watching it if we have the chance.

Bring a friend to work day! (Day 20)

Today was the long awaited bring-your-friend day. I decided to bring my brother, so I could show him what I am working on.
We started off with everyone introducing themselves. The morning meeting room was packed with people, which was pretty unusual. We then went up to the freshman lab to peer review outlines for our presentations. Everyone already had a great start for their presentations! There's only two weeks left until presentation day, which is simultaneously exciting and nerve wracking.
Zihao and I decided to take a group of the visitors down to our lab, because it is the coolest lab ever (literally and figuratively). We ran a spectrum to demonstrate how the spectrometer works. I also took the opportunity to photograph each of our pigments. I'm hoping to include pictures of them in our final presentation.
We had lunch at Salsarita's again. It was really delicious, as usual. Madi and I exercised our mind reading skills again, and I'm pretty sure everyone was super impressed at our ability.
We briefly played volleyball, but quickly realized it was just way too hot to be active. So instead, Madi and I taught everyone how to play a game called Contact. (look on Madi's blog for instructions on how to play).
I had a little bit of math homework that I didn't understand, but the other interns were able to quickly explain it to me, which was so helpful. Alice even taught me a cool fact about the tan function.
I worked on our final presentation some more today. I'm hoping to finish it within one week, which will leave us with one week to practice it before the actual day. It's going pretty well so far!
The day ended with my brother Nico participating in picture quality study, which only took about 15 mins.
It was really fun to have all the interns' friends and family join us for the day!

Day 19

It feels good to be back at the internship again. In case you were wondering, I was in Boston last week on a mission trip.

The intern group was a little smaller than usual, because Madi was still away on a family trip and Emily had a migraine. (Feel better soon, Emily!)

We had a pretty quick morning meeting in which we discussed the bring a friend day tomorrow. I am 90% sure I am bringing my brother Nico.
After the meeting, I did some final edits on our outline. Zihao did a great job on it while I was away, so there wasn't a ton of editing that needed to be done. Then I uploaded it to my blog (see last post).

I've also started working on a rough draft of our final presentation. So far, I've just got all the slides in order. I haven't started writing anything yet.
Prof. Hornak found a spectrum of Victoria Green, which I was very happy about because I had been looking for one for at least a week.

Allyse and I went to participate in an improv activity with some of the RUs. It was really fun, and I was glad I got to take a break to do something creative.

Outline

8/1/2016

Title: Development of a Low Frequency EPR Spectral Library of Pigments

Background: (3 slides, ~ 2 minutes)
• Define EPR, maybe include a picture of our spectrometer
• Why we are using low frequency EPR
• What the graphs can tell us i.e. their applications

Theory: (3 slides, ~ 4 minutes)
• Spinning e- = magnet. There are transitions between the two energy levels
• Graph of E as function of B – audience will see as B increases, energy difference increases. Explain that the graph is different for different substances
• Explain that when input energy matches the energy difference, there is the max amount of transitions. Our spectrometer measures how many transitions there are.

Results: (8 pages, ~ 5 minutes)
• Each page is devoted to a pigment. Compare spectra from different frequency, if applicable

• Include pictures of each pigment in the test tubes
• include graphs of each pigment

Conclusion (~ 2 mins)

Questions & Answers ( ~ 5 mins)

Total: ~18 mins