The sun hasn’t been beating down this week and we’ve had a good breeze going, so it’s been very nice to walk around campus.

Here’s our setup:

There’s a method to the madness.

After running our experiments, we prepped some samples for analysis. My mentor and I went to a communal lab! I was able to see and run a new-to-me piece of equipment – A Sputter Coater. Essentially it looked like a Coffee machine from the future.

A sputter coater is used to apply a thin layer of metal (we used actual gold) to prepare a sample for electron microscopy. My mentor mentioned that an instrument similar to this is used in the jewelry industry which is how we get “gold plated” accessories. Unfortunately the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was booked this week, so we will be running our prepped samples during the weekend. We will be looking at the volume of salt crystals and their structures.

P.S. If anyone is looking for some good eats on Campus:

I recommend to try the Dandelion Café in the O’Connor Building for Engineering.