Natalie Hernandez | Week 3 | University of Houston

Hello all, I hope all is well. This is Natalie checking in from the University of Houston.

Week 3 was a very busy week. On Monday I looked at my results from Friday. It was pretty shocking to see that we had gotten our image completely resolved. The next step was switching out the regular light source for a laser. Most of Monday consisted of getting comfortable with the laser and creating an ideal set up for the laser. Monday I also began getting comfortable with the grating. I began reading a book about gratings and studied my specific grating. Each grating has a different number of cuts that diffract the light differently. Mine had 1200 cuts. After some discussion with my mentor Sarah and professor Baldelli we looked up different equations that may give us a better number to work with. Finally we landed on the one we wanted and the angle we ended up wanting to use is 38 degrees.

Grating

Tuesday was mainly setting up a basic setup without the grating using the laser. This process was quite quick as it only meant removing the light source and substituting the laser in. The next step was designing the final product but with the laser. I created a pretty basic design with what I wanted to do with the laser. I also began my calculations on what angles I will need in order to get my image to be as clear as possible. The first equation I utilized was for images that hit perpendicular to the grating, unfortunately my image was hitting at an angle. 

Wednesday we tested the actual product I designed and it worked fine, but after some discussion the decision to add mirrors to alter the path of the laser was made. This alteration of the lasers would ultimately give the laser a more precise point of contact. A lot of the time spent in the lab is looking for things. So, I spent some time finding some mirrors that I could work with. 

Thursday I began setting up the mirrors and aligning it to where the middle points of all my apparatuses matched up. This took up all my time on thursday. The alignment of different things in order to get the most ideal image is far more difficult than I anticipated. After getting everything aligned I set everything up on the board and realized I was not utilizing my space to the fullest potential. 

Friday consisted of me planning where everything should be located in order to have enough room. Then I began placing my apparatuses again. I finished adding the first half but then ran out of time. 

Set Up

Saturday I came in for a bit in order to apply the rest of my setup and get everything aligned properly. I also had to alter a lot of the apparatuses I was using because The bases weren’t fitting or they just weren’t reaching the height needed. I spent some more time looking for materials to use. Unfortunately I concluded that I was not going to be able to fit the ccd camera onto the board. So we are planning to add a mirror to deflect the image so that everything can fit on the board. 

Sunday was a very fun day. For lunch I had a very yummy poke bowl, and for dinner I had Thai from a very yummy Thai place. We explored Herman park and seeing more of Houston on our way to the park was an amazing experience. 

Poke Bowl