I began my week, Monday morning in the lab with Ting. We checked the pH, took more water samples, and then sent them to the centrifuge. When that was done, I went to watch a experiment being conducted by Al Muatasim Al Nadabi, or Almo, a mechanical engineering masters student. For his experiment Almo tested the cracks created when different concrete rods, that had been cured in different ways, had a force acted upon them directly above the ‘precrack’. These ‘precracks’ were little slits that had been made by an insert that will help control where the crack comes from.
In the green circle, you can see the image that is being taken of the concrete in the blue circle. As you can see in the image, there is that nice slit. From there, the press that you see in the blue circle, will create a force that will increase that crack. The strains being caused by this increasing crack, will be seen and analyzed by the image. It will be able to analyze this by the little dots, as seen all over the concrete in the image. These dots will be monitored as the move, and their movement will show the strain.
After I observed the experiment, I headed home.
I had pretty chill days in the office Tuesday and Wednesday, and I mainly worked on analyzing and creating a graph of the pH data from Ting’s lab.
In Excel, I input the data and made a graph! It looks super simple, but I’m proud of it, because I have never worked in Excel before, and it was fun to play with the graph visuals. After lunch Kevin, Adriann, Charlie, and I were able to get into the lab and work with the CO2 sensors one last time. For this lab we ran a low, 500 PPM gas, and a high, 1500 PPM gas, on all the sensors and LI-COR to analyze how accurate they were at those levels. My hypothesis was that the sensors would be less accurate at the higher PPM, as we saw in the roof experiment.
I began my Thursday taking the last samples, doing the last centrifuge, and testing the last pH levels of my internship.
Ting will be taking one last pH level, sample, and centrifuge at the two week mark, I just won’t be there for it.
After that I didn’t have much to do, so Kevin and I went and explored the Geology building and he showed my all the coolest things!
I ended my week and my internship Friday, by going to tour a super awesome robotics lab. The lab was the headquarters of the robotics club, and their sole project was to build a rover that would go to the moon and mine for gravel. But, it was a competition held by NASA, so they had to work super hard to build something that would hopefully be taken in by them. This competition and the club reminded me a ton of my own middle school robotics club and our competitions. It was super cool to see it at the college level, and it was definitely more professional and serious. It also concreted my love for robotics and my drive to pursue that in college.
This week was filled with lots of last hurrahs in my free time. On Monday I went on a gorgeous hike just after it had rained all day! It made the hike a nice temperature, filled it with amazing aromas, and made everything green and vibrant.
When I got back, Danny Boy was adorably waiting in his chair.
On Wednesday, I went to Red Iguana, which is super good Mexican food, and I tried mole for the first time, it was amazing!
On Thursday, I went to a concert up in Park City with a friend that I had bumped into at Red Iguana! It was super fun and we got to walk around and tour the town. It reminded me so much of Mountain Village in Telluride!
When we got back into Salt Lake, my friend and I got some super good frozen yogurt too!
I learned so much from my amazing experience with the McPherson lab, and I can’t thank Kevin McCormack, Ting Xiao, Zhidi Wu, and Adriann Liceralde enough for being such wonderful mentors adn helping me learn so much! I also can’t thank Pinhead and Sarah Holbrooke enough for finding me such a wonderful place to go. I hope to continue with geology in college alongside with mechanical engineering and robotics!
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