Our lab building(ISTB4) has so many interesting things that Roberto, his mom, my mom and I all came in on Saturday(the 29th of July). I meant to talk about this like three weeks ago, better late than never.

Every Wednesday, and Saturday the building puts on a movie open to the public, sometimes free, sometimes 5 dollars. We saw “50 Years of Hubble” for the anniversary of the telescope

Roberto, Me and my Mom

After the show we gave tours of our labs to our parents. Then we walked around the first floor of our building which has dinosaur bones/fossils, a space control area where people work with ASU’s space equipment, and much more.

We finished the day with the best ramen in Arizona at Shady Parks.

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Today my mentor and I learned how to use the FT-IR machine. Wikipedia has this to say about the machine: “Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is a technique used to obtain an infrared spectrum of absorption or emission of a solid, liquid or gas.” We used this spectroscopy to see if APTES has attached to SiO_2. We are trying to use APTES as a link for the nano particles to attach to. Unfortunately we saw very low absorption that we think is APTES. This mean that the functionalization ether didn’t work or there is a very small amount that stuck. In our experiment we will see if that was enough APETS.

Me working with the FT-IR machine

The best part of using the FT-IR was that it needs liquid nitrogen to keep it cool, so even though the results weren’t what we had hoped for we(I) still had a blast. Sometimes all you need is a little child like wonder.

The Leidenfrost effect cleaning our dirty floor.

If you want to learn more this effect I recommend this video:

Yesterday was my first mentor, Ariel’s, going away party. She was such a wonderful mentor and is a great friend. I wish her all the best in Los Vegas. I am honored to have been taught by her.

For the event we went to a restaurant which I had never been to called Cornish Pastie. The food was amazing and they had many different things I could eat. Being allergic to dairy I usually only have one or two things I can choose from, at that place I had four items! I didn’t know what to do with myself. I finally decided on the “vegan oggie” and boy it was an excellent choice.

I have survived the great leak of Tuesday 2019!

We came in Tuesday morning to discover that the Moleaer nanobubbles generator had spewed its water all over the lab. It had to be some time in the night because the water had already evaporated in spots, which was nice because it hid that is was our fault. Like a peer of mine said, “Flooding the lab is kind of like peeing your pants except a lot more people notice.”