But first, back to Monday. After all the orientations had finished, we were supposed to meet with our mentors for lunch, or just plain meet them, but no one showed up for me. When I mentioned who my mentor was, I got "Oh yes, he never shows up to these things" in reponse. Not a good start. However, after going to lunch with some other currently-mentorless girls, I was able to connect with my mentor.
I discovered that he is a busy man, as he is the Chief Scientist for Space Exploration Technologies at NASA Ames, and has many things to do. But, he did sit down and explain to me what my project was, and that I'd be working with another student who just graduated ChemE from USC. And then I was done by 2 pm.
Tuesday was more of the same, as I had 'Chemical Lab Safety Boot Camp for NASA Ames Interns" which lasted and 3.5 hours and ended with a quiz. And no new information. But, since I got all trained, today some real lab stuff started!
While I don't know how much I can say about my project (intellectual property rights/trade secrets and all that jazz, especially since we are trying to pitch the idea to the army) I am growing ZnO [Zinc Oxide] nanowire. I had never seen the process or known how to grow nanowires before yesterday, and today I was told to start making stuff. There was a nice PhD student who helped Kunal (my lab partner) and I figure out how to work the nanowire growing apparatus, and in the course of 2 hours discovered that the lab we were given (yes, a whole lab that only we are using!) was (a) a MESS, (b) everything that could be disconnected was, (c) that we couldn't find some reagents or were out of others, (d) that our vacuum pump was spitting oil (it is not supposed to) and (e) that the tank sitting in the spot labeled 'Argon' was actually an almost-empty tank of pure nitrogen with a knob that wouldn't turn. Thus, a great part of my day today was cleaning and organizing the lab and finding things, so tomorrow we can start in earnest. We did find the right reagents, stopped the oil leak and cleaned a bit - all in all a sucessful day, and I was there til 5!
Also, I don't know what pictures I am allowed to take inside the Ames park, so I haven't yet taken my camera to work. I might attempt to subtly take some pics from my phone as I am driving around base... Thus, the picture of the pins, of which one is for the launch of LCROSS which is happening in few days! Ames has worked hard and long on this project and on Tuesday, they are going to launch piece of machinery that will eventually hit the moon in a crater that has never seen sunlight, on one of the poles, and then see if they can detect any water-ice from the debris that they create. Sounds cool, yeah?
And that's about it folks, time for bed so that I am not dragging until 10 tomorrow...
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