It's raining! Kate = happy.
I have just finished running a set of IFSS tests, and have discovered one of the most tedious and annoying properties tests so far. IFSS strands for interfacial shear strength, and it's used to determine how well the reinforcing material in a composite sticks to the resin. The method relies on taking a single fiber, putting a microbead of resin onto it, letting it dry, then pulling the fiber though a gap between two plates using the Instron and determining how much force it takes to pull the bead off the fiber. It sounds simple, but the devil is in the details: I'm using flax yarn as the reinforcing material, which is made up of lots of twisted fibers, each on the order of 20um in diameter, and it's these fibers that I have to test. In order to provide good data, the microbead has to be as small as possible, something like 200um in length. And because the fibers are so thin and fragile, the yield of good data is something like 30-50%, so I have to make 30 samples for each type of resin. Simply put, the whole procedure is an exercise in patience and precision, neither of which I'm renowned for. I have to admit, though, I'm pretty impressed that the human eye can see things that small.
I'm quite busy at work, otherwise - I've learned most of the experimental procedures I need to know, so now I can work at my own pace without having to ask my grad student for help every five minutes. The Cornell Cinema also started off the summer season last Wednesday - they show foreign, art, classic, and some studio films. So far I've seen Schulze Gets the Blues and Shortcut to Nirvana - and I'm looking forward to a lot more.
Apparently we're going to have a safety inspector come by the lab sometime in July, so a.) we were expressly instructed to wear closed toe shoes and pants in the lab (bye bye cool skirts and sandals...) and b.) I get to clean Friday morning - Anil (my mentor prof) has designated 9:30am as the hour, which is fine by me, but my grad student will have to work a bit to make it on time... In my heart of hearts I'm very happy, since our lab closely resembles a pigsty. In the afternoon Xiasong (my grad student) and I have a meeting with Anil to go over my results - I have a lot of testing to do tomorrow, and I hope my samples cooperate with me... Go science!
Archive for June, 2005
(Real) Update
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005GRRR
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005
\begin{whining}
Damn the weather, damn stupid construction - it's screwing up my data! First they turn off the cold water to one half of our building, so that the climate controlled room is no longer climate controlled and my samples have to sit out for a week. Next the weather heats up and turns humid, so that said samples soak up water like sponges, and now last night's thunderstorm caused a power surge, which tripped the breakers in the instrument lab, knocking out the power, which turned my 24-hour moisture test into one of indeterminate length, so I can't even measure the moisture content of my samples accurately.
End result: Kate with a bunch of crappy data on her hands. What's worse, the weather shows no signs of improving for next 10 days (which is as far as weather.com can predict.) Aside: Good thing my parents are not visiting for 4th of July - they would have been miserable, I would have been miserable, and we all would have been pissed at each other. The current plan is to hide somewhere with air-conditioning and fantasize about Death Valley. At least it's dry.
\end{whining}
Damn the weather, damn stupid construction - it's screwing up my data! First they turn off the cold water to one half of our building, so that the climate controlled room is no longer climate controlled and my samples have to sit out for a week. Next the weather heats up and turns humid, so that said samples soak up water like sponges, and now last night's thunderstorm caused a power surge, which tripped the breakers in the instrument lab, knocking out the power, which turned my 24-hour moisture test into one of indeterminate length, so I can't even measure the moisture content of my samples accurately.
End result: Kate with a bunch of crappy data on her hands. What's worse, the weather shows no signs of improving for next 10 days (which is as far as weather.com can predict.) Aside: Good thing my parents are not visiting for 4th of July - they would have been miserable, I would have been miserable, and we all would have been pissed at each other. The current plan is to hide somewhere with air-conditioning and fantasize about Death Valley. At least it's dry.
\end{whining}