On Monday we started with an 8:00 am seminar about gun violence with an attorney, then I and my lab partner Arthur went to the lab together on scooters. When we arrived at the lab our mentor told us that everything we did last week wasn’t useful since the solution wasn’t homogenous when set in the vacuum oven, and as well the copper foil we used was so thin the solution evaporated before being placed at the vacuum oven. So we decided to use another type of copper foil that was resistant and we used a ruler type of thing that spread out all of the solutions in the foil. Finally, we cut the copper foil and went back to the dorms since the process takes approximately 7 hours.
On Tuesday I went early to the lab since our mentor wasn’t going to be available in the afternoon, we weighted the copper foils with different solutions and set them on a case with my lab partner, that took about 2 hours since we weighted each foil five times, and later that day we went to a weekly seminar that was from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm.
Wednesday was a great day we transfer copper with the different solutions and when use CMC with THF as a solvent. It was the first time that I was able to use the glove box and it took me about 10 min to set everything up since is hard to put your hands in the box, basically what I did was place a battery anode cap also known as spring, then I added a lithium base that should be cleaned carefully, then you tighten up the cap with the lithium base and my mentor finished the battery cell adding the separator a working electrolyte and a cathode cap. We finished that day putting the batteries to charge at the machines and they take about 12 hours to charge so we left. Then at 3 pm we had a College Prep seminar in which we did 8 UC prompts with 100 words each, as well we did a cover letter and a resume, we had assigned some mentors but this time to show us how to become more proficient in our college admission essays.
Thursday we were assigned to do a presentation about SEM which means Scanning Electron Microscopy (and it captures the secondary electrons emitted from the surface of samples that are coated in gold or palladium Ions). However, the thing that happened was that we noticed that CMC and THF weren’t totally homogeneous when mixed meaning that the batteries didn’t work at all, our mentor took out the copper and showed us how the solution wasn’t fully homogeneous and because of that, the copper had little holes around it. However our mentor told us that we were going to use a different solution that is AlF3 which he has done some research on and knows will work with the electrolyte because is homogeneous, Then we went to the SEM in the afternoon and watch in the microscope what actually happened to the CMC solution and why it wasn’t reactive, and then he showed us how an actual cell should look like in the microscope, it was an amazing experience.
Friday I used the UCSD bus to arrive at my lab since I was a bit early and I saw a lot of parts of the campus, that I have never been into. In the lab, we use the new chemical AlF3 at a 5:8 ratio and a 5:10 ratio so we could acknowledge which one is the most reactive, that day I used the vacuum oven and did about six different samples of the solution so we could have a larger margin of error, but our mentor had a meeting at 12:00 pm so we left the solutions in the foils and left the lab for that day, then I went to the beach with some roommates and some friends I did.
Saturday and Sunday I am going downtown alone and I want to know more about San Diego downtown.
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