Work Report Evaluation

That, was the fastest work report evaluation I've ever had. The PI is awesome.

Of course, it's kind of embarrassing when the evaluation went ok, then um, the PI sends you a list of typos and discrepancies afterwards. I blush even when just thinking about it. (Dammit, these things never happened before. I should learn how to make and use a database.)

Incidentally, why do things *always* get fixed on the day I leave? This has happened on a different work term before. Grr.

Anyway, on the whole I don't think I'll miss the lab very much, but I'll definitely miss the PI. (And a few other people too.)

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Work Report Statistics

This time, the report's mostly pictures.

Official time taken to write: 1 month
Actual time taken to write: 1 week
Time spent procrastinating/banging head against wall due to lack of data: 3 weeks
Number of words: 4275
Number of times laptop needed restarting*: 3
Number of times Foxit** screwed up my diagrams and I had to re-do them: 10
Good news of the day: Finished work report, what else?
Really good news of the day: I went to the PI with a question, and he agreed with one of my conclusions, which happened to be against everyone else's conclusion in the literature.
Really bad news of the day: the same said PI discovered that my stoichiometry calculations were wrong. Which means all my samples, all these months, had problems. I must've been drunk at the time, never you mind that I don't drink ethanol-based solutions.
The other bad news of the day: the lids of one of my reaction vessels (read: jam jar) for my personal experiments went rusty, and contaminated the contents inside. Ick. Must chuck in lab waste bin tomorrow.

Anyway, the report is off to the presses, and will be handed in tomorrow afternoon (whenever the people at the copying place finish binding). Amazingly, there's no appendix (ah, "supporting information") needed - almost everything fit in the report itself, experimental and all.

Incidentally, should I give a thank-you card to my supervisor? It's the polite thing to do (actually, the polite thing would be to get an actual gift), but under the circumstances...

*Yea, I haven't gotten a new laptop yet. Macs are great, except they are freaking expensive and I'm broke from paying tuition. Maybe after I get my paycheck.
**I should get Adobe Acrobat. Or Illustrator. Someday, when I can afford it. I just need it to make pixel-by-pixel adjustments on pdfs.

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Levity

Now for lighter happenings in the lab.

1. For reasons that will take too much talking to explain, a grad student blew a raspberry at another lab member today. Afterwards, whenever I talk to either of the two, I had to refrain from laughing. It was surprisingly difficult*.

2. I was reminding the PI about some administrivia, and mentioned that since a particular machine is down, I have really incomplete datasets for my report. He complained - "You're making my life so complicated" - but then actually got out of his office to haul out a potential substitute machine for me. Sadly, said machine won't work (otherwise an enterprising grad student/postdoc would've cobbled it together already) but still, it was really nice of him.

3. Another machine was behaving unusually well today. I gave it a hug ('cuz I'm sentimental like that). *Someone* started a run with said machine using a crappy sample**, and the machine was good enough to run it anyway. At least I was around often enough to avert dumb mistakes like forgetting to turn on coolant flow. (To machine: Aww, I'm so proud of you! To *someone*: please, please, please don't start the machine unless someone who knows what s/he is doing is around. And it'd be really nice of you if you'll get the data off the computer yourself, although it's probably too much to hope for that.)

On the down side, I spent my evening running calculations for people instead of writing my report...again. Dammit. Must. Write. Report! (One grad student totally owes me a coffee now. The school's copy of The-Program-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named does not export fractional coordinates (not even copy/paste), which means...I have to copy them all down. Manually. Given over 50 atoms, this is something of a chore. I am not looking forward to the >100-atom case.)

It's also unfortunate that right now, I'm still sleepy despite 500 mL of coffee. Sigh. To reiterate: Must. Write. Report! (zzz)

*It's probably one of those things that's funny only when one is physically present.
**Almost everything with the sample was wrong; it didn't even fit the sample holder properly. Frankly, it was amazing that the machine got anything out of the sample at all.

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Miffed

This is one of those blog posts that I really shouldn't make, because it's a rant about my supervisor. Nevertheless, it's going to happen, because I need an outlet somewhere.

My supervisor and I, we don't get along too well. I'm surprised that neither of us have strangled each other yet (or something). Here's two examples that exemplifies our um, working relationship.

So it's no secret that I'm writing a report. My progress is slow, because I'm used to writing reports by concentrating on it 8 hours at a stretch, and this is a luxury that I don't get to have this time. Instead, I focus on the report for at most 10 minutes at a time, followed by running around babying machines along so they do their respective jobs. Anyway, I digress.

What's happening is that the data isn't exactly as expected. Um, "random" might be a better word. In response to that, I really want to do a single-crystal XRD, this time with better crystal samples. The crystals are grown (they've been sitting in the glove box for a month), I just need my supervisor to liaison with the crystallographer (the crystals need to be chosen, mounted, and handed off). But my supervisor sure ain't doing it (or showing me how to do it), and I can't do it myself since I don't know how.

Also related to the data: to paraphrase him, "For your report, give me a copy of all your data; I'll explain it and you'll write it down."

*Blood pressure increases to a simmer*

I dodged an argument, and simply said that the report is like homework in that I shouldn't really receive external help. But, arrrrrgh. No, sir. This is not how it works.

["You" = "supervisor"]

Ok, this project is as much my baby as it's yours, especially since you are usually working on your other projects these days. I did almost all the work. I should get to do the thinking, too! Sure, I don't have the experience to have all the answers, but look, an undergrad is not just a cheap robot. As astonishing as it may seem, an undergrad can think, too. What's more, I think your ideas are dead wrong. Until you convince me that your hypotheses are reasonable, and consistent with the existing data, there is absolutely no way I'm including your so-called explanations in my report. I like my report to be a solid piece of work, thanks, not a goulash of ideas that don't make sense to me.

In fact, if I don't understand something, even if it's something superficially simple, I go to the PI. Not you. I don't trust anything that comes from you, unless it comes with a citation. Preferably multiple citations, from reputable journals. Bearing in mind that about half the references you have are from me, anyway, since you apparently can't use Google worth a damn.

So yea, leave me alone. I'll run samples for you, and organize then hand you the data, like a good little undergrad. (And no, I don't need a template to help me do simple calculations like finding the density of a sample!) But I will not take dictation for you then call it a "collaboration". Especially when your ideas aren't good enough by my standards for my report in the first place.

Postscript: if you are ever going to write a publication on the project, leave my name off of it.

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Three-Second Power Outages

Flicker off, flicker on. The microcosm that is the chemistry building plunges into darkness for about 3 seconds. I temporarily lose the wireless internet signal. Every computer in the building turns itself off. Including the one running my sample. Obviously, the computer doesn't back up data while it's collecting said data. In short, fuck.

Since someone else booked the machine for tomorrow and early next week, I can't rerun the sample until later next week. The only bright side is that it's not a critically important sample. Sigh.

The university should invest in backup generators. Even if it just runs for 3 seconds at a stretch. Or something.

Now that I think about it, I wonder how the pre-programmed gadgets and the glove box in the lab fared?

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Schedule v2.0

My half-assed report draft embarrasses me, even though only the introductory bits are in (i.e. no data, since that's still being generated). Goodness knows that my supervisor writes worse than I do, but this does need to be solid - correct, precise, concise, mellifluous. That's the idea, anyway*. Here's a complete overhaul schedule - version 2. Hope I can stick to it.

Eek. I only have two weeks left until my work term ends. So the report must be done soon.

Today's pretty much over; I want an outline. A detailed outline. T'aint detailed, but I have an outline. Need to fill it out a bit. Poke around COOPs (crystal orbital overlap population).

Tuesday: Do all the COOP calculations if possible. To nobody's surprise, I did the calculations before I did the outline. Theoretical section. Fortunately, most of the "procedure/methods" part is done.

Wednesday: Experimental section. This thing, it is long. And the data won't be all in till the end of Thursday. And there are no conclusions. Nevertheless...

Thursday: Finish the experimental. Top and tail (introduction, conclusion, summary, preamble bits). The preamble is mostly done, and the conclusion will be short. But the introduction and summary may well take all day.

Friday: Editing. Preferably twice - once just a read-through, second time with checklists and style guides in hand.

Saturday: One more edit. All problems must be fixed by this day. Then go out and print/bind the thing. Try to collate the thing correctly.

Sunday: Bind the report if it couldn't be done in time on Saturday. Fill out forms so the PI doesn't have to.

Monday: Troop into the PI's office, and hand the whole thing in. Then run away and hide (or something). The PI'll have nearly a month to read it, because next term will be starting late. Although it'll be more "politically correct" to let my supervisor read it first, I don't want him to. I don't trust his judgement.

This schedule will not be a problem if I can get away with doing nothing but writing. Unfortunately, I do need to garner data. So this'll be difficult. *Deep breath* 'k, let's go.

*It's easy to impress people who has a lifetime supply of crappy reports to read; I hadn't met an employer who wasn't impressed yet, anyway. However, I'd imagine that it's harder to impress an actual professor.

[Edited]
I spent my entire evening troubleshooting someone else's calculation instead of writing my report. Sigh. It's difficult to write when I don't know what to say. Double sigh.

[Edited again]
@#$%^&!. I thought I finished data collection today and can therefore start (finally) making my experimental figures. But no, *someone* wants more data in the report; I won't finish collecting those until the end of next Tuesday (assuming all goes well). So I can't bind the report this weekend. Damn him.

On the positive side, I'm nearly done all the text part (pre-edit). Just need to do the summary, two subsections (one theoretical, one experimental), and insert all the citations (thank goodness for BiBTeX); I ought to be able to finish them by tomorrow, one day behind this schedule. Also, I finally figured out how to export powder patterns from "weird data file" into plaintext. Small mercies.

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I Take Back All The Freakouts

Yea ok, I take back all my worries about the calculus final. It was trivial.

There is one problem I'm worried about - somehow I managed to show that the flux of the Coulombic vector field (r/r^3, where r = ||r||) over a unit sphere is always 4pi if the sphere is centered on the x-axis (not just the origin). Intuitively, this doesn't make sense, but we'll see what happens when marks come out. Other than that, stupid final.

As an example, here's a toy problem for you: prove the generalized integration by parts formula

\iiint_D f(\nabla\cdot\mathbf{G}) dV = \iint_C (f\mathbf{G}) \cdot \hat{n} dS - \iiint_D \mathbf{G} \cdot \nabla f \, dV

where the boundary of D (open in R^3) is C (a single, orientable closed surface), n-hat points outward, and we have the usual "nice" conditions (i.e. f, G are C¹ over D and C; f is a scalar field and G is a vector field).

(If you want I can give you the slightly harder problem that follows this one, but that one's actually pretty easy too, just longer.)

Of course, an easy final is a wonderful thing, given that I ran more calculations instead of studied for the 6 hours before the final. Naturally, my calculations decide to fly in the face of known facts. I will need to consult my supervisor and The PI on Monday. Again. Sigh.

There's the work report too. I really don't know what to say - the data will be (kind of) all there soon, but conclusion? what conclusion? ("More work needs to be done...")

On an unrelated note - shoutout to roommates who are leaving: aww, y'all are leaving...thanks for being awesome all term!

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Gotta Study, and Stuff

For some reason, I am never motivated in studying for applied math exams. It's not that they are trivial (well, borderlining triviality, actually...), but they are just so tedious! How many line integrals can one do before one begins to nod off, anyway?

So yea. Gotta study. Gotta study. Gotta study. I'm tempted to take Friday off so I can focus on studying instead of analyzing samples. But I probably shouldn't.

Not much progress towards my final report per se, because I'm spending all my time getting data. One of the dying machines was revived*, the dead one is still dead, and a new machine manages to keep me busy for half a day at a stretch**. Yay.

In other news, I think I got the problematic set of calculations worked out. Just need to fix one more error message; the problem is, I have no idea what it means, and the manual won't tell me anything about it.

Need to prep more samples, too...*mumbles to self*

*It was serendipitous: I lost the internal QC, attached a new one, and voila, everything starts working fine. It's not the QC itself that was bad, but the way the reference was attached to the system. Eh, as long as the QC stays good like it's supposed to, I'm happy.
**Oh. Fuckity fuck. I have a feeling I forgot to turn the cooling water off. Just a feeling. I also have a feeling that nobody will spot that (and thus turn the thing off for me). Dammit! However, being insensately lazy and irresponsible (and tired, actually...), I don't think I'll go back to the lab just to turn it off. It'll just have to stay on for the next 8 hours or so. Sigh. At least it's safe to leave the thing on.

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Note to Self: Calculations Edition

Not sure whether I've mentioned this, but the kind of (solid state) calculations I run at work typically converges quickly, on the order of seconds to minutes. Unfortunately, this isn't always true.

The main reason the calculations go so quickly is that the theory and basis sets used are very...um...simple. Kind of like VSEPR - the amazing thing is that it works as well as it does.

For "busy" cells with lots of atoms, though, the calculations still take a fair bit of time, even if the system is high symmetry. Calculating over more k-points adds to the problem. Right now my record is seven hours and counting. Thankfully, this time I'm not running calculations on a computer that restarts every 24 hours, so at least I can leave this overnight.

So far the calculations are relatively straightforward, because the symmetry is the same in all cases. Let's hope that the more problematic ones work as smoothly as this set, though I am not optimistic in that regard.

[Edited]
An energy calculation is diverging. Crap. I have to let the current calculation finish before trying something else, though.

[Edited again]
Previously mentioned calculation eventually converged with no prodding from me whatsoever. Whew. Now I'm starting the more problematic calculations; it's probably time to pay a visit to The Program That Shall Not be Named. If it's smart, the program might even do some subgroup operations for me.

Incidentally: The rigid band model is a freaking cop-out. Psh.

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Ok, That's It. Time for a List.

So I just had a long weekend. With no work to show for it*. That's it, I'm writing myself a list.

Life is simpler, since I only have one course. Whew.

• Exam notes - to be done by this Friday. This is easy, I just need the patience to sit down and do it without falling asleep. Then spend the weekend reading said notes.
• Practice exams - one a day, starting next Monday, until they run out. Plus review of assignments and relevant material as needed.
• When the notes are done (so this weekend or earlier), start writing the report. The data's nowhere near readiness, but things like introduction can be written first. Also, the much-dreaded calculations needs to be done.
• Final's next-next Saturday.
• All non-data parts of the report should be done by the Monday after the final.
• The entire report needs to be complete by the Friday after the final, data or no.
• Badger supervisor** (and later, the PI) to mark the report, along with completing the final student evaluation.
• Badger supervisor to give everything back to me before I disappear for the term.

Dicey to-do list; not sure whether I can make it. But life's no fun if to-do lists are easy, I guess. Unfortunately I can't risk bringing my dying laptop to work, or I'll be more productive***.

*I paid tuition. That's something. Now I'm destitute. Again.
**I'm extremely worried about this because, as I've mentioned before, I disagree with my supervisor on nearly everything. Having him mark my report will be...interesting. Not in a good way.
***No, I will not write my report in Microsoft Word. Not even Word 2007.

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Machines Now Hate Me

Naturally, just when I need it most, a machine starts hating me and gives me crappy data. It's never liked me much, I think. So now, despite going to lab early and staying late, my productivity hasn't increased any. If anything, it decreased, since now I have days with zero usable data points collected.

The problem is that the problem itself isn't reproducible, either. I'm essentially running the same sample over and over (with possible minor tweaks) until a lucky strike hits and the data turns out alright*. Then I agonize about whether to trust the data because none of the runs are consistent with each other, and the sample changes a bit after every analysis.

Usually, when things are unreproducibly wrong, I blame malfunctioning electronics. Maybe something's loose, connections aren't quite meeting, something shorted out, or something like that. However, by inspection (I daren't take it apart**, and most of it is visible as-is anyway) things look ok. Also, other people don't seem to have problems. It's just me.

It's not a sample-inherent problem, either, since I ran similar samples before and, while the data weren't great, they were more-or-less decent. (I had exactly one run where the data was actually pretty. Sadly, it wasn't reproducible.)

I'm slightly tempted to make my supervisor do a run from scratch (sample prep and all) and see if the machine hates him too. But not that much, mostly because I don't trust him. Among other reasons, sample prep is slightly finicky and I have quite a bit more practice than he does.

So yea, the whole thing is just one big mess. Sigh.

Not quite as important but annoying all the same: my cell phone's dying, too. All the buttons stop working unless I plug it in to an outlet, in which case half the buttons work. Argh. Nor haved I gotten around to replacing my laptop yet***. Dammit, I'm too poor for this - need to pay tuition in the next few days, too!

[Edited]
Cherry on the cake: the other machine I regularly use is now toast. By "toast" I mean "needs to be sent out for repair". Arghh.

*All I ask for is a differentiable-looking curve, and an acceptable "QC" (quality control, though the QC itself isn't that great). The machine fails even that. Sigh.
**Not a good habit; it comes from industry where, if something doesn't work and I can't fix it readily, I get my boss to call the manufacturer and the professionals can deal with it. Though "readily" may well involve taking everything apart, poking around, then putting everything back together. But I only do that when I'm responsible for the machine, and not someone else, as in this case.
***I'm seriously tempted to get a Mac - even my computer-science acquaintances succumbed (though most of them seem to run some variety of Linux or BSD on the Mac). Now I'm waiting for Snow Leopard, since I don't like Vista and can't wait that long for Windows 7.

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Crunch Time

Amazingly, July is nearly at its end. This means report-writing time is coming. Crap!

Of the three "real" work reports I've written during past terms, two were simply summaries of existing data that the company would've collected anyway, and one was a quick two-week project on getting a gadget to work with a new method. I sit down, spend one week typing (or procrastinating), and that is that.

This time, I have a huge obstacle*: data collection is nowhere near completion! I can't write about a system if I don't even know how it behaves!

At my current rate of one data point per machine per day, I'd be lucky to finish data collection even before my work term ends, much less write a report about the data. Unfortunately, most of the time is non-negotiable: there's (obviously) no making an instrument analyze samples faster without compromising results, and other people in the lab will need to use the instruments, too. This is assuming that the samples cooperate in the first place, which they have a recalcitrant tendency not to.

Recently, I began to go to the lab earlier so I can maybe squeeze in two samples (if I'm lucky), but to be honest, I'd rather not work 11-hour days** - my brain gets fried too quickly, and that causes mistakes that'd otherwise not occur. Furthermore, as an undergraduate, I'm not really supposed to be in the lab during off-hours at all***.

I still haven't gotten them calculations straightened out, either. As I said, no motivation whatsoever other than a sense of obligation. Sigh.

There's also a final exam that I must study for. Really must. I have a feeling I'll avoid that particular task until the day (or two) before the final, alas.

(Actually, to be completely honest, I also have a feeling that this entire project I'm working on is completely unpublishable, for various reasons. Four months of work and nothing to show for it, sigh. But that's another story.)

*One other obstacle being my supervisor. But the grousing alone will take up a whole another post, one which I won't actually post for obvious reasons. Let's just say that he'd find me much easier to work with a few years ago when I was more... pliant. Or at least not as vociferously opinionated, anyway.
**12-hour days are quite doable, but only if there is substantial off-time (e.g. long weekends, holidays/breaks) to compensate. Which is clearly not the case here. Caffeine is good too.
***I can understand the rationale - undergrads are intrinsically never as trustworthy as grad students/postdocs - but it irks me all the same.

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Say What You Will

People say alot of things about The-Program-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, much of it rather unkind (and with good reason). But, say what you will, at least it handles unit cell/supercell manipulation pretty well (even if it fails to do actual calculations on the cell). Moreover, it'll figure out the space group for me when I start mucking around with my unit cell. That alone made my day. Sure, I can find the space group manually, but hey, I'm lazy and I'll probably make mistakes anyway.

Of course, the reliability with which programs figure out point/space groups can be suspect, because the "apparent" symmetry of a molecule is not necessarily the "true" symmetry after accounting for geometry optimization*. However, since the coordinates of my structure are really simple, I don't have to worry about that (I hope).

After a long day of struggling to prep one sample (stupid finicky setup *mutters*), having something actually work as planned is a nice change. Now if I can only learn how to write scripts so that my series of calculations can run without me manually tweaking each input file, that'd be even better. Given that I'm not in computer science, though, I'm probably stuck with running commands manually. Oh well.

Actually, instead of running calculations, I really should be working on my "professional development" assignment (due in less than three hours). *Grumpy*

*In this case, the "Symmetrize" button is a useful friend to have. It does exactly as advertised - it tries to maximize, or at least increase, the symmetry of a structure; one can also constrain a calculation to fit a certain symmetry. It's sometimes a bit limited, and I'm never quite sure what exactly is it doing**, but it helps.
**One of my professors is old-fashioned enough to manually symmetrize molecules, meaning with the list of atomic coordinates and a set of matrices. Sure, in this case you'll know exactly what is being done to the molecular geometry, but just thinking about it gives me the shivers. *Shivers*

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Computational Mire

The lab does some computational work to complement all the experimental work we do. However, the prevalent view on computational chemistry seems to be:

1. Put structure (or atomic coordinates, what have you) in a black box
2. Follow instructions printed on a sheet
3. ???
4. Profit!

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But if I'm not, that's really sad.

Anyway, given that this seems to be the case, when (one of) my supervisor(s) runs calculations with me, *I* watch like a hawk* (a role reversal, there!). Recently we ran into some problems, but I don't think my supervisor even really noticed (or cared).

Unlike the previous troubles I've had with calculations, this problem actually has a really simple solution. Unfortunately, it's a brute-force solution. Thus, I don't have much motivation to fix it. Nobody likes boring problems.

Somewhat exacerbating the issue is the fact that the calculation still terminates. It's just that the results are all wrong. I don't know how my supervisor does it - he somehow blithely ignores all the error messages and forges gaily on. (Seriously - why does he even read the error messages if he's going to ignore them?)

Since my supervisor doesn't care, I should fix the problem on my own time**. But it's so boring! But if I don't fix it, nobody would! I need motivation.

Sometimes I find myself missing The-Program-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. There's more room to play with, even if I don't understand what I'm doing sometimes.

Tangentially, is there a good book or review paper on things like comparing choice of basis sets and computational methods? I never really understand why people pick what they pick for their calculations. Sure, I can read the original papers, but y'know, I'm lazy.

On another tangent -
The crystallographer, today: "Your crystal was shitty. Grow me a better one, then come back." *Sad* (Actually, the crystallographer is really nice, but there's no going around a crappy crystal.) For my particular material, getting a polycrystalline solid is trivial; growing *nice* single crystals is the harder part. Sigh.

*The program runs in a Unix environment; it's so easy to make mistakes with the command line, it's not funny. And there's no undo button.
**I have now acquired enough information to access my supervisor's account remotely (yes, yes, legitimately). *Evil smile*

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On a Completely Unrelated Vein

For powder XRD (or maybe just the instrument the lab uses), if the sample is not flat (i.e. x-ray might not quite hit the right places it was calibrated for), one of two things can happen.

1. If the sample is lower than expected (e.g. indents), the powder pattern shifts to higher 2 &theta
2. Similarly if the sample is higher than expected (e.g. mounds), the powder pattern shifts to lower 2 &theta

(I spent 15 minutes* trying to match powder patterns to no avail and this turned out to be why. Sigh.)

Pedantry behooves me to note that I said e.g. not i.e. because I'm sure there are other situations where the sample isn't at the expected location.

*This doesn't sound like much - I guess I'm used to spending only two minutes on it because I know what my expected products are.

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Professorial Nomenclature

Some people call their professors by their last names, preceded by "Professor" or "Doctor"; others by their first names. Being old-fashioned, I call all my professors "Professor \Lastname". This doesn't work so well in the lab, however.

In all my previous work terms, I always call my bosses by their first names, because that's how they introduce themselves. Even if my supervisors have PhD's (and some did), it's just weird to use the supervisors' last names/titles when everyone else uses the first names. (Using titles also gets kind of weird when your boss's boss doesn't have a PhD.)

This term, well, I'm actually at school. So, I call the PI "Professor". However, everyone else calls him by his first name. It's gotten to the point where, if I refer to the PI as "Professor", people will take more time to process the name than if I just say the professor's first name. Also, it's a bit inconsistent to call the PI "Professor" when I am perfectly fine with calling postdocs by their first names rather than "Doctor".

So now I've taken to calling my PI "Professor \Lastname" if I am talking to him and by his first name otherwise. It's inconsistent, dammit. I'd rather just call him "Professor" all the time.

(Tangentially related: I always feel a bit awkward when professors refer to each other by their first names in front of students. E.g. "Go talk to Mary, she does alot of this in her research" rather than "Go talk to Professor Smith...").

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To-do List

As usual, when I don't have any motivation, I make a list.

• Calculus notes. Midterm on Tuesday. The problem is that the course is so easy, and so unrigorous, I have no inclination to study. But I should.
• "Professional development" course. (Major) assignment due next week; zero interest. Not a productive combination.
• Literature. There's a few papers I ought to be reading, in hopes that they'll explain why the data behaves oddly.

It's a much shorter list than usual. Nevertheless, I better get cracking.

Postscript: I keep losing blue pens and markers. It's not like I eat them, so why do I keep losing them?

Post-postscript: I need a pair of wire cutters/side-cutting pliers for labwork (the pair that was already in the lab vanished). Must remember to find it. Sigh.

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A Brief Rant

Since this is work, I can't say too much.

But I'll say one thing: politics are no fun! Can't people just let me work and get data? Now everything's all awkward, and even someone as socially inept as I can notice it.

And of course, the data are not cooperating. Dammit.

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One Day...

I won't be tongue-tied when other people in the research group ask me questions.

As graduate students, postdocs, technicians, and such, the actual members of the lab are well-versed in the art of asking questions. In particular, questions that I should be able to answer but can't. (The PI hides in his office and therefore doesn't count.)

Some questions are easier than others. What's the space group of this polymorph? What are the melting points of these elements? Those, at least, have very clear answers. (From now on, every time I see a random, well-established fact concerning my compounds, I write it on a "reference page" in my lab book.)

Other questions are dicier. Based on the three data points that the instrument just measured, do you expect the final plot to behave this particular way? Do you *really* think that this meter is trustworthy? What's the electronic structure of this like?

Usually, with sufficient thinking and/or literature searches, I can eventually come up with answers. That, however, isn't the point. People don't always know whether my answers are right, nor do they really care. They want a concise response that matches well with what they (as more experienced chemists) know, and they want it now. If an answer is unexpected, there better be good reasons to justify the answer.

I guess the idea is that since I work on this project (though it's not strictly speaking "my" project), I should know it better than anyone else, from the conceptual to the trivial, and everything vaguely related in between. It's tough to prepare for these questions - I never know what they'll randomly ask next! (Naturally, nobody asks about things that I do actually know.)

Anyway, it's all good-natured, and I like these questions. But I'm still working towards the day when I can actually answer these things spontaneously.

Postscript 1: I broke something expensive today, right before the start of a measurement. Fail. (Also, booooooo, no data for me.) Definitely still a klutz, even after all these work terms.

Postscript 2: I'm waiting for calculus to end. I mean, evaluating the expressions (e.g. path integrals) themselves are basically exercises in applying simple formulas and then number crunching. Not fun. Also, the lack of rigor is painful - I miss epsilon-delta.

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Time for a Picture

So, what's this? (Answer below.)


Despite my horrible picture-taking skills, it's probably easy to see that it's a carbon*-coated silica tube.


The way my supervisor did this was interesting. Basically, coat the interior of the tube with some organic solvent (acetone, ethanol, whatever you use to wash stuff) and heat it evenly along its length (till almost white-hot, but not to the point when the glass softens too much). The heat carbonizes the organic material and leaves behind soot**. Repeat coating/heating until the tube is evenly covered with carbon. This stuff does stick to the tube - it stood up to several light rinses***.

Frankly I'm surprised that the solvent didn't ignite on its own, but this procedure apparently works pretty well.

This particular tube has a slight problem, which is why I can take it and photograph it - there's actually an air bubble trapped between the carbon and the glass tube. I eventually gave up trying to take a picture of said bubble, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Why this tube is covered with carbon is left as an exercise to the reader.

*I hesitate to call it graphite. Amorphous carbon, graphite, maybe even a few buckyballs - who knows what's in there?
**Well, that is a redundant sentence.
***Moral of the day: when the supervisor hands the tube to you after rinsing it with acetone, and tells you to check one more time whether the coating is still solidly there, do NOT immediately follow instructions and hold it up-side-down to your eye - I did that, and the acetone came flooding down. Thank goodness for safety glasses.

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