- I’m really enjoying the cool fall weather. Sign me up for more of this cold rainy buisness; I like wearing a sweater and sipping cocoa while waiting for the morning bus.
- After 5 days spent waiting on the synthesis of my stupid nanoparticles, I finally get to do science today. Yes, synthesizing nanothings is also technically “doing” science, but it’s like watching paint dry. Or waiting for water to boil – very slowly. The damn things just stir in their vials. It’s the advanced monkey work part of my job, as I like to call it; the part that a highly trained primate could do. Synthesis is kinda also like cooking. There are recipes. The recipe for my nanoparticles is something like this: mix 2 parts dendritic polymer to every 147 parts platinum tetrachlorate (which is a verrrrrry pretty sunset orange color) in water and let stir for 72 hours. Add 10-fold ratio of reducing agent-to-platinum ion, seal tightly and let stir for additional 24 hours. Place solutions is cellulose sack, seal off, and dialyze for additional 24 hours. Remove from cellulose sack at exactly 24 hours (this is the part I f***ed up last time) and store in glass vial.
- My PChem student is doing very well, with one exception: she forgot to turn in her homework which she had halfway completed. Her PChem courseload is very similar to mine, judging from her homework assignments, that is, it is work intensive. The homework is essentially where PChem is ingrained in the students’ heads, not in the actual classroom, reason being that the teachers flat-out don’t have time to explain very much. It’s up to the students to jump onto the playing field and learn how to play the game. SO far, my student has done well. She’s learning how to play the quantum mechanics game quite well. She can now visualize integral calculus and intuit expectation values without calculating them. Back to the homework issue: the PChem homework for a good solid pchem class should take students between 10-20 hours per week to complete. I know for a fact that she did about half of it, because I worked on initial steps with her, and later checked her final answers. I was priding myself on how well she was doing, on the fact that I had complete confidence in her ability to play the quantum game, having already walked her through initial steps.
Then I found out she screwed the pooch. She wasn’t able to finish putting the work in on the homework because she has another ugly upper level class, advanced organic chem. Why, I asked her, didn’t you hand in what you already had? You put in at least 7-8 hours on that! Apparently, she felt guilty for not finishing it, and too ashamed to turn in unfinished work. So, because you didn’t want the professor to think you’re slacking off, you decided not to hand in anything rather than get about half the credit for the problems you already did, which you worked hard on and were correct? You ridiculous creature! Folks, this girl is me approximately 5 years ago. I used to screw myself over like this all the time. If I was late to class or lab, I simply wouldn’t go that day. I felt dreadfully embarrassed and disrespectful walking into a lecture that had already started, so I would skip, rather than show up in the middle of class. Idiotic reasoning, right?! Of course, I set her straight, and told her she’d better not pull that kind of crap again. I think she got the point. I had a mind to email her professor and vouch for her having worked halfway through the set prior to the deadline, and then tell her to tuck her tail and ask to hand in her assignment late for partial credit, but I resisted. That would be meddlesome.
**UPDATE**
Now with more pressure!
- Just found out I’ll be going to Brookhaven National Lab to do EXAFS (extended x-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy) at the the National Synchrotron Light Sourse (NSLS) for a week…3 weeks from now. I’ve been up in my boss’s grill about doing EXAFS because I do love the quantummy goodness of the technique, and I also love me some reubans from those NY delicatessens, soooo I win! I’m officially on team EXAFS. It’s kinda a big deal because of the scarcity of beamline time; EXAFS beamlines require supercoliders, so there aren’t a whole lot of them available. This, of course, means my work day will become about 4 hours longer and this will probably be my last weekend off for the next month. So, I got what I asked for, but will I like it? All work and no play usually makes barbie a surly girl. On the upshot, if everything works out, I’ll probably have more than half of the data for my dissertation. No pain, no gain, right?
