"The focus of the project is on observing the dynamics of small islands floating on freely suspended smectic liquid crystal bubbles. In this NASA funded project we use video microscopy to analyze the brownian motion of the islands to extract diffusion constants, and lase trapping under LabView control to measure the interactions between pairs of islands. This project involves obtaining video data, developing LabView code, and analyzing the results using IDL and Python routines."
Alright, alright, I could get into that. I was a little disappointed that I would be using LabVIEW, a programming language that, while powerful, is very tedious to use. Of course, I didn't want to have a tedious summer, so I emailed my professor, Joe MacLennan, and was assured that there would be plenty of hands on experimentation throughout the summer. Have no fear, LabVIEW will be the least of your worries. Well, at least he was right about that.
As an aside, I would like to point you all toward this epic picture of my professor. Yes, he still has that moustache, yes, he is as awesome as he looks, YES, he has an accent. Basically, he's bomb.Unfortunately, however, he is currently on vacation for three weeks. So I do not have the pleasure of getting to know him for at least a little while. In the meantime, I'm getting to know my labmates.
My grad student, well, his name is Zoom. Z-O-O-M Zoom. AWESOME. Well, his name is actually Duong, but somewhere along the line he picked up this far more kickass name. He's pretty chill, and very smart. Win.
Other than Zoom, there are several other undergrads working in my lab. There's Markus, he has a mohawk. He also gave me a free copy of Plants vs. Zombies. I like him. Then there's Aaron, he's very tiny, and very smart. It took a while to get him talking, but now I think we're friends... at least I hope so, he's a good kid. Sam is the student I work most closely with, but he's leaving in a few weeks. Sad. He actually just graduated with his Bachelor's degree in Physics, and is in the midst of applying to law school. Whatever floats your boat, kid. There are two other girls in my lab; Tatyana and Cheney. Both are very nice, and less socially awkward than I was expecting.
Speaking of socially awkward, I seemed to have skipped an entire event in my time here! My first meeting with the other students in my REU. Approximately 12 physics students in one room. 4 girls, the rest guys. Only 12 students, and two, I repeat, TWO of them are named Vladimir. Only in physics. I connected pretty quickly with Eric, or, Beautiful Eric as we like to call him, and with Travis, the kid from UTexas (saw 'em off!). Also, there's Kevin, he goes to W&M and knows like, 8 of my friends. Crazy. I also made friends with Sabrina, who is awesome and rock climbs, and comes over to our apartment a few times a week. The rest... generally socially awkward. I was having lunch with Travis today (after Travis, Eric and I went to the Dream Theater/Iron Maiden concert last night!) and he was complaining that the physics kids at his school are always getting together to hang out and drink a few beers. Doesn't happen with this crowd. But in general, they are all very enjoyable people.
Back to my lab. I'm sure you all are *dying* to hear about my research... or so they call it.
I was introduced to my project as being the "creation of a new technique to accurately deposit liquid crystal droplets on thin films." Basically, all of the research that is being done in our lab is being done on hope. "We hope that two islands will form next to each other and then coalesce," or, "we hope that a droplet will pop within two seconds of formation," or, "we hope that two droplets will form that are of comparable size."
Too much hope. So my job is to create a new technique to place drops of a determinate size accurately on a thin film.
I spent the first week figuring out how to tell a function generator to output a specific burst of voltage on command.
Once that was working (it took about two hours) my next task was to design a program using LabVIEW to control the function generator using the computer. This took a little more time. In two days, however, I had come up with this little beauty:
It might not look like much, but that little program produces this:
And using that "front panel," as we call it in LabVIEW language, I can control the amplitude, frequency, and shape of the wave, as well as how many bursts to output, how many times to trigger, and how long to wait between triggers. Basically, I can tell the function generator to output just about any wave I want. Cool.
That program was finished last Tuesday, and my time between then and now has been spent in wait. Sam, one of the other undergraduate students, has been working on the hardware. Because this post has already gotten too long, and because I need to upload some pictures, I will leave this post at just the software. Expect to see another regarding the hardware soon!
Love to you all,
Plunk!
I was introduced to my project as being the "creation of a new technique to accurately deposit liquid crystal droplets on thin films." Basically, all of the research that is being done in our lab is being done on hope. "We hope that two islands will form next to each other and then coalesce," or, "we hope that a droplet will pop within two seconds of formation," or, "we hope that two droplets will form that are of comparable size."
Too much hope. So my job is to create a new technique to place drops of a determinate size accurately on a thin film.
I spent the first week figuring out how to tell a function generator to output a specific burst of voltage on command.
Once that was working (it took about two hours) my next task was to design a program using LabVIEW to control the function generator using the computer. This took a little more time. In two days, however, I had come up with this little beauty:
It might not look like much, but that little program produces this:
And using that "front panel," as we call it in LabVIEW language, I can control the amplitude, frequency, and shape of the wave, as well as how many bursts to output, how many times to trigger, and how long to wait between triggers. Basically, I can tell the function generator to output just about any wave I want. Cool.
That program was finished last Tuesday, and my time between then and now has been spent in wait. Sam, one of the other undergraduate students, has been working on the hardware. Because this post has already gotten too long, and because I need to upload some pictures, I will leave this post at just the software. Expect to see another regarding the hardware soon!
Love to you all,
Plunk!
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