This week with research, I continued studying the oscillating thermal diode. The piezoelectric materials have not arrived yet, so I am running experiments on it to understand the behavior of the device as much as I can to find frequency-optimal configurations. The beginning of the week was kind of tough as I had taken a vaccine and it was still affecting me a bit. Thankfully, I took it on Saturday, which meant that the worst of it passed on Sunday. However, this meant that I had a few days when my arm was hurting quite a bit.
The biggest highlight of this week for me was a subgroup meeting I had with my PI, where my mentor, another undergrad, and I discussed each of our projects’ progress. I had prepared some key points to mention for the meeting, but I felt unsure about the quality and quantity of my report after the meeting. I confirmed with my mentor that I am still on the right track and that I did well, but I feel that I need to be more productive for each meeting– I especially need to improve how I communicate the information I have. I was instructed that the main method to do this is by using PowerPoint slides to clearly organize my progress. I can also use this method to keep a living document that includes my progress throughout these 10 weeks.
Being in the cloud is tough because I am not sure how productive or effective I truly am, despite being constantly active and working. It is a bit tough to distinguish when I am deviating, when I am experimenting more than I should, or when I am devoting too much time to one thing. Despite this, I am glad that I enjoy the process of research still. Next week, I will conduct more configuration tests and learn more about piezoelectrics. Hopefully, the materials will arrive soon, but I might create a program that simulates the electricity generated by these materials to have a theoretical reference to compare. My mentor suggested I could add this to my project, but I am not very sure if I am capable of doing it, but I will try. I also hope to order some pyroelectric materials soon, but I directly contacted a manufacturing company to get a quote, which I have never done before. Hopefully, it all goes well. My mentor will be gone for about 3 weeks, but I think I have learned enough to conduct some experiments on my own and I can refer to others in the lab for questions. Also, we ended the week with a lab group dinner. We had good food and chatted to get to know the lab group better.