Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Final Day: Back to Argonne

After a brief off-site respite, I am back at the Advanced Photon Source once more. I was just about to start running my sample, when the beam cut out. Then I had to reload my sample and restart not once, not twice, but three times. My sample just got started in the past hour. Oh well. The data looks okay-ish now, so hopefully, this keeps up! Right now, I am manually recording the temperature at which each pattern is being taken. I will personally pay for Argonne to automate this process if it means that I do not have to do this again when I come back.

In the time that the beam was down, I trolled around Pinterest for a while. Now, I'm not actually on Pinterest because I know that I would turn into that person who is ALWAYS on Pinterest. But that doesn't mean that I can't troll around on it occasionally. (Revelation: I just realized that Pinterest is a play on "interest." Don't judge. Just because I'm in grad school, that doesn't mean that I can't be slow to get things some times. :P Also, it is 2 or 3 in the morning.) I dug up a bunch of fun recipes, so I'll have plenty of things to blog about in the coming weeks. :)

We have about six more hours of beam time left before we head back to Evanston/Chicago. It's been a good experience, albeit a tiring one. Being here and seeing the capabilities has given me a bunch of ideas on stuff that I want to try. That's the problem with research sometimes....one idea can lead to twenty more (or sometimes, one meeting with your advisor can turn into three months of work).

I've got to go tend to my sample now, but until next time!

1 comment:

  1. LOL! I just got around to reading these! Sounds like you guys had a fun (but productive?) adventure down there!

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