Day 4 in Sunny Carbondale

Hey everyone.  I haven’t had a real opportunity to write on the blog since I got to Carbondale this past Sunday.

It has been a slow start.  There have been orientations and tours of chemistry facilities and paperwork paloozas galore over the past few days.  We have yet to obtain the equivalent of Banner ID numbers which are necessary to perform such activities as obtaining an ID card, connecting to the internet, parking legally, eating in the cafeteria, and doing laundry.  As a result, we do not have internet connectivity in the dorms, so I am writing this during my maiden visit to the library, which is very nice.

On Monday, we watched each professor who would be directing an area of research give a ten minute presentation (though ten professorial minutes is really more like nineteen earth minutes).  They were interesting, but I will admit that the day grew long.

The professor in charge of my project is out of town until Friday, so I have been operating under the supervision of a graduate student.  Yesterday, he laid out the groundwork of the project I am doing and gave me substantial reading materials.

Essentially I will be fabricating and analyzing nanowires formed from various ratios of Nickel to Iron.  There will be seven batches, 6:0, 5:1, 4:2, 3:3, 2:4, 1:5, and 0:6.  Then I will use a scanning electron microscope to study visible morphologies of the various alloys and, using energy dispersive spectroscopy with the SEM, determine the final ratio of Iron to Nickel within each sample.  If time permits, I will also perform an X-ray diffraction experiment, which I do not fully understand currently.  The most important part is certain magnetic measurements under a parallel and perpindicular magnetic field.  More details are to come.  More specific information can be had from this link, which may or may not be broken.  http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=17909959330274837858

Today I made some solutions that I will use to fabricate a 100% Nickel batch tomorrow morning.  I am also working on a presentation that I will give to our group, which will hopefully land right on ten earth minutes.