Week #3 is slow but good. I didn’t spend as much time in the lab this week, since most of the materials needed to conduct the experiment were not available yet. So, I spent most of my time in my cubicle, reading articles/structuring my research. I must say, I am not used to sitting for long periods of time, and I decided to take a break and walk around for a bit every now and then. I might bring my camera, because the campus has some nice spots.

My mentor asked me to read an article about the synthesis of an electrocatalyst, which is essential for my research project. She asked me to replicate the synthesis in the laboratory, and I wrote down all the steps and procedures the scientists conducted in their own research. I was a little bit nervous, but I successfully synthesized the electrocatalyst, and my mentor was supervising the whole procedure.  Doing lab work is pretty fun. I guess when my friends ask me what I did over the summer, I’ll tell them I was a scientist doing scientist things. I did also tag along with my mentor when to another lab that had really interesting equipment. What she was performing was an analysis called “XRD Analysis” that uses x-ray incident rays to read the crystallization of materials. I have never seen such a sophisticated machine but it looked interesting.

I gained some insight this week when I was in the lab. I usually expect things to go as planned the first time. Don’t we all? Of course it’s not always like that. My mentor and I had one of our experiments fail, and we spend quite a bit amount of time attempting to figure out why it had failed. As I write this today, we still don’t know what caused it, but we hope we figure it out soon. As for my insight, I realized it’s not only humorous, but interesting when things don’t work out the first time. I enjoyed diagnosing the problem, discussing the potential causes, and what we can do to fix the problem. I know. It seems counter-intuitive to actually like when things don’t go my way, but maybe it’s just the engineering in me. I mean, I’m pretty sure when cars were being designed/built, they didn’t successfully work the first time right? Anyways, I hope this insight will help me throughout my engineering degree. When I don’t understand a concept or material in class, I tend to get frustrated easily, and I forget that is the natural part of being a problem-solver. To sit down and ask yourself, why am I not getting the answer I want?

As the week progresses, my research has been growing. I have some ideas that I want to conduct into my poster presentation, Next week I will collect data on that. So, for now, I think that I have made some progress in my research, and I am excited to see what is to co

-Adrian