Life as of Late

February 12, 2015 / Amanda / 1 Comment

Hi friends! How is your Thursday morning going?

Posts have been a little sparse this week since grad school has amped up. Right now I’m frantically trying to finish up 2 journal papers. One is bad enough, but two on completely different subjects is a whole ‘nother ball game! One paper is on some silver nanowire research (can you spot the nano?) and the other is on some thermoelectric and heat sink research (not very nano, but will be in the future).

A huge misconception about research is that we spend all day in lab coats/gas masks plotting to take over the world (MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

While this is a major bonus to research, we actually don’t spend as much time in the lab as you would think. I made this handy chart to show how a typical day breaks down…

A good portion of time is spent writing, reading, drinking coffee, or doing all three simultaneously. Obviously the drinking coffee and actual research parts are all the fun. As is playing on the spinny chairs in the lab (wheeeeeeeeee!)

In other news, I’ve starting increasing the amount I work out because…..my training for Ironman Raleigh 70.3 starts in less than 2 weeks! -insert freaking out- Here’s a pic of me and my mom (HI MOM) from right before the race last year.

It was an ok race. I finished in 6:47 which isn’t horrible for a first time, but I felt like I was capable of more. I made a few newbie mistakes which will probably be talked about later, and overall I felt like the course ‘beat’ me. SO I signed up again, found a training plan more suited to my totes cray schedule and am ready to take it on again!

Today is more writing, more research, swimming lessons, and a hockey game! Should be fun!

Have you ever had a race that ‘beat’ you?

It’s Finally Friday

February 6, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi friends and happy Friday! How has your week been? It’s been a little random over here (aka why posting has been random).

We had to prepare a working demo for a last min presentation on Wednesday, so Tuesday turned into a 14 hr work day. But … it was worth it because the demo worked! It was pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

This is what it looked like after everything was assembled and hooked up. I can tell you that it uses TEGs (thermoelectric generators) to produce electrical power from body heat, but that’s about it (confidentiality stuff).

Even though I left work at 10pm, I was pretty pumped and motivated so I headed over to the gym for a short treadmill run. Ran about 2.5 miles in 21 min with a couple of sprints thrown in there at the end for a good sweaty end to the day!

Yesterday we got in another Blue Apron! (Note: we don’t receive any compensation for this, we just get really excited about food)

Look at all the food!! We’ll keep you updated on how this week’s recipes taste 🙂

This morning we took it easy, no thanks to a certain dog-who-shall-not-be-named who was ruthless in her quest for morning cuddles and pets. She has mastered those super sad puppy eyes that say “love me”….gets me every time!

I decided to whip up a bowl up unphotogenic oatmeal (added in some almond butter, chocolate whey protein powder, and a few semi-sweet chocolate chips) before heading into work for more testing and more fabrication.

What are your plans for Friday night?

– today is First Friday in Raleigh so we may hit up some fun bars or something 🙂

Nano! Part 1

February 2, 2015 / Amanda / 1 Comment

Good morning! I’m feeling pretty exhausted today but I figured you all ought to know about what ‘nano’ is since chances are it’ll get talked about quite a bit on the blog. So brace yourselves. It’s about to get sciency up in here!

Nano is a prefix that means something is 10^-9 or 0.000000001 units (I think that’s the right number of 0’s, I kinda lost count) of something aka suuuuper tiny shit. Usually you hear it used in reference to size (i.e. nanometer). We are talking about things that are only slightly (an order of magnitude for you sciency folks) larger than an atom. Here’s a pretty useful infographic about size.

http://www.asu.edu/clas/csss/NUE/img/Scale-of-Things.jpg – always cite your sources people!

Basically you can look at individual atoms on the nano-scale. Pretty nifty right??

So why do we care? Besides the cool factor. Well materials and shit behave differently when you shrink them down. For example, gold. Everything shown in the image below is pure gold. So why are the vials not gold-colored?

http://blog.manuscriptedit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Fig-1-gold-macro-vs-nano1.png More citations y’all. Seriously, don’t plagiarize.

Great question! It’s because those vials contain gold nanoparticles in a clear solution. At this the macro scale, gold reflects light along a yellow wavelength. At the nano scale it reflects red! Same material. Different properties!

This doesn’t just go for color. Nanoscale materials have all sorts of different properties than their bulk counterparts. There’s a reason for it, but I won’t go into that today since this is a butt-load of info already.

Right now I’m working with graphene. Sounds like graphite (the stuff in pencils) right? They’re the same material at different sizes. Graphite is a bunch of layers of carbon atoms in a particular pattern (they make hexagons or if you want to sound like a pro – they have a hexagonal lattice). Graphene is basically less than 5 layers of graphite. This pic is one layer of graphene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene#mediaviewer/File:Graphen.jpg

Let’s be honest, graphite is not the most exciting material. But when you strip it down to graphene it gets super exciting. It’s crazy strong (100 times stronger than steel by weight), and is both thermally and electrically conductive.

This material was first isolated in 2004 which led to the guys getting a Nobel Prize (“The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010”. The Nobel Foundation.) <—citations y’all. Aka it was a pretty big deal. Also this is a pretty new material. There is a whole world of applications and uses for graphene that are basically the latest and greatest thing to research right now.

Flexible touch screens
Drug delivery systems
Structural supports
The sky’s the limit!

What would you use graphene for?

Sleepy Sundays…

February 1, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

…are the best! Gotta love taking a lazy morning and reading the paper with a nice hot cup of coffee.

How is your weekend going?

Ours has been pretty good so far even though we spent about half the day in the lab yesterday. Research never sleeps. Which is why you should never start an experiment and have to check on it over the weekend….oops.

After work (on a Saturday..I know) we stopped by Panera to grab some sammiches as a late lunch before running a few errands.

It actually warmed up a bit and was sunny so we each went out for a Shelley Lake run. Steve and I don’t run together often since I kick his ass and like to go fast. But sometimes run dates are fun.

We have a great house that backs up to the Raleigh Greenway system (which is probably the best thing about this house) so we can hit the trails anytime!

It also means we get some phenomenal people watching opportunities. Yes….chances are we are shamelessly judging you (nobody’s perfect).

The trail behind our house leads to Shelley Lake.

It’s about 4.5 miles to run around the lake and back so it’s perfect! Except when the evil canadian geese take over the trail but that’s a rant for another day.

I finished up the run in about 37 min @ 8:50 ish pace. Steve took it slow at about 11:30 pace.

We have a Super Bowl party on tap for today and have some puppy plans!!

What are you doing for the Super Bowl?

Who are you cheering for? –I’m going Seahawks all the way! Go Seattle!

It was not rain

January 30, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Wooooooo it’s Friday! -Does Friday dance-

Yesterday was a bit of a bust. Ever have those days when you just need to accept that nothing productive is going to happen? Yep. That’s it.

Sadly we are out of tequila so that margarita didn’t happen. Maybe next time!

One of the nice things of grad school is that you can make your own hours (if your adviser allows it). So, once productivity halted around 3 pm, I went home to get a run in.

By the time I got home, the sunny day had gotten overcast. I checked the forecast since running in the rain when it’s 40 degrees out is a recipe for disaster and we were cleared for rain for another couple of hours. So I decided to head out with a rain coat just in case.

As I got ready to head out, I heard the sound of a light sprinkle. After looking out and verifying that it was, indeed, a light sprinkle, I decided to continue with a short 2 mile run.

It was not rain.

This was the look on my face as the realization of exactly what was falling from the sky hit me.

It was not rain. Rain does not bounce.

It. Was. Sleet.

Thoughts that went through my head while running:

Sleet hurts when it hits your eyelid. Ow.
My legs are cold. My feet are cold. My face is really cold.
Man up Amanda, you got this.
The greenway is kinda creepy with no one on it.
SHIT what was that noise?!? Oh, wait. That was my jacket.

Did 2.2 miles in 18 min (8:28 min pace) and came in and gleefully sat and watched Dr. Who for the rest of the evening! Where it was nice and warm 🙂

PhDeviants

Misadventures in grad school, running, and life

Graduate School