Hello everyone,

The fact that week 8 just ended is making me realize how fast time goes by. It feels like just last week we were at the orientation and getting introduced to our mentors. I will blame some of that on the Hurricane! Anyway, this week has been the first full week I worked in a while, given that we had the holiday as well. I prioritized getting my abstract finalized, as well as doing some last-minute testing. I now have a full data set with 4 different carbon ratios for the 60 μm cathodes. The 40 μm data is all being tested at once currently, hopefully, I will be able to include it in my poster presentation. I was successful in my task of finding a slurry recipe that works for the 2% carbon ratio, which my lab has not studied before. On Tuesday, I prepared cathode strips and left them to dry. Then on Wednesday I prepared them and assembled 6 coin cells at once, and this pretty much ends my work in the lab. Now I am just waiting for the tests to finish, which take around 180 hours, but I am hoping to receive good data.

It honestly feels like I was just getting started in this research. As soon as I started grasping the concepts and getting successful data, the time ran out. I have been utilizing my time outside of the lab to design my poster, and I should be able to finalize it once the rest of the testing is done. After this REU is over, I am going on vacation to Kosovo with my brothers who live in Jordan. It should be a nice break before going back to college!