Ninth Day


Today, during the morning meeting, Joe had us peer edit other interns' abstracts. It was beneficial to read over other abstracts as I was able to hear about and understand the research other interns are doing, and I saw a couple areas where I could improve my abstract.

In the morning, I continued to review MATLAB. I watched a couple of YouTube videos about how to make a multidimensional array, and Tristan showed me the code that he and Dmitry created, which helped to further my understanding of coding. I think by explaining his code to me, Tristan was able to understand his project better as well. Dmitry came in with the acrylic, so Lee, an REU intern, and I went to the laser cutting lab and cut out our pieces. First, we had to pull up our pdf drawing into a program called Inkscape, where we changed the colors of our drawing; outer edges were black, holes were blue, and the tick marks on the track were red. Then, we saved the Inkscape file into a pdf that the laser could process.

Here's some pictures of the cut pieces. The acrylic is actually clear, but has a blue protective film that we will remove later.

track:
















track and other pieces (before re-cut of cart pieces with holes):


The laser cutter was really cool. I was able to learn how to use it, which was helpful because later in the afternoon, I had to go back and re-cut the cart pieces to have .5in diameter holes matched up with the connector piece holes. We did this because we don't want the screws connecting the connector and the light platform to stick out past the cart pieces. The original cart pieces didn't have holes in their sketch, so I had to go back and redesign the pieces with .5in holes on SolidWorks and then go through the laser cut process again.

cart pieces with .5in diameter holes on top of cart connector with holes of .25in diameter:


During lunch, Tristan and I went up to the Reading Room and hung out with Emily and Paige, and some other researchers. In the afternoon, my task was to have the track holes counterbore so the cart can glide on the track without being affected by screws (screw heads need to be level with track surface). I originally went to the laser cutting center, but they didn't have the right tools, so I had to find the machine shop in the engineering building. Once I found the machine shop, someone was able to help me and showed me how to counterbore. It was a fun and interesting experience.

track with counterbore holes;


Dmitry won't be here for the rest of the week, so he will send instructions tomorrow about tasks to be finished. When Peter gets back, I will fill him in on MATLAB. Overall, today was a really fun day, and I enjoyed learning how to laser cut and get around campus by myself.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Second Day

Day 2 of interning also went well! At 8:45 we had our daily briefing with Joe and were given a schedule of the internship. After that, my group and I went down to our office space where we set up shop; I also reviewed some of the material we went over yesterday. At 10am we met up with Dmitry and went over our "homework" from the night before and reviewed information about bell curves, mean, and variance, and learned some new information about reflection coefficients and the Fresnel equation. After that, Dmitry printed out some information for us about polarization that we read through for about an hour and a half. Then we took a lunch break and met up around 1pm. We went to the main lab where we took a look at the enclosed room that will be used for Tristan's research, which isn't fully constructed yet. It's necessary that the room is enclosed and the air is filtered because dust and dirt will create noise that will affect measurements and data. Dmitry then sho
Read more

Twenty-seventh Day

On Friday, Peter and I started to look for error and the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) in our pictures. We used MATLAB to look at which pictures had the highest SNR and lowest error. We decided that pictures taken with an exposure time of 8500 microseconds and at lower angles had the best SNR. In the afternoon, we worked on our PowerPoint and did a mock presentation in front of Dmitry. We have a lot of things to change in our presentation organization-wise, but nothing too bad. It was beneficial to verbalize our info, and get constructive criticism. One thing we didn't emphasize enough in our original presentation was what Peter and I actually did, including designing the track and the glass holder. In our final presentation, we are going to explain more of what we actually did, so it will be more fun for us to present and more entertaining for the audience.
Read more

Fifth Day

Today, during the morning meeting, all of the interns watched a video description of imaging science. After the morning meeting, I caught Peter up on the information I found about birefringence and then showed him how to use the camera. We then started to research how to measure birefringence and then went up to the tech talk on the second floor. The talk was about how imaging science is used in the biomedical engineering field to create new, less invasive technology. Less invasive technology means that doctors need more external viewing ability through technology such as digital models or physical models. I really enjoyed the talk and was able to learn a lot about biomedical engineering. In the afternoon, Peter and I took a quick break and then continued research about the birefringence   of skin cells. We then looked into some reports that Dmitry suggested about polarimetric imaging of cervix cells that used processes that we might be able to apply in our own research. Tomorrow, w
Read more