papers and probes and people, oh my
Feb. 23rd, 2010 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaMy progress report for Monday: 1) Welded shut the first end of several new gold capsules, which are ready to fill with powder for future experiments on another session. 2) picked up the epoxy-mounted capsules from my fourth experiment (take two) and started the process of polishing them. Stopped for a break at the first hint of getting tired, and again when I'd just polished into the "charge" (as we call the powder we pack into the capsules from which the minerals grow). Me, being overly cautious after what happened last time? Yup. I could possibly have finished getting it open enough to add the second coat of epoxy early enough in the day to have it ready for more polishing so that I could have analyzed it in today's microprobe session. But I didn't think it was worth the risk to rush it. 3) added a bit more to the paper summarizing my PhD research, then sent the still very rough draft to my advisor in Tassie to ask if he thinks that I'm heading the correct direction with it. I know that editors don't want to see the unedited version of one's thesis, but I'm not positive if I'm making the correct sorts of changes in the process of "summarizing", so I decided to ask before spending too much more time on it.
Today's progress: Microprobe session! Went back and obtained many analyses of minerals from my first three experiments, and from the three experiments whcih had been done in this lab years ago with similar composition "charges" and at similar pressure and temperature to my experiments. Those experiments were run long enough ago that they had an older microprobe, and they'd missed some of the minerals present, which, as a result, were never analysed, so I'm going back and doing them now. That took seven hours of my day. Then I went home an curled up with a book and some food for a bit before returning to uni and catching up on personal correspondence (my personal e-mail in-box is empty again, two days in a row, and I've also gone back an replied to Facebook messages that had been sitting in a folder awaiting my attention for ages (some nearly for a year). That task accomplished, I returned to uni work and spent another hour going over some of the results, and tabulating things.
My, don't I lead an exciting life?
Today's progress: Microprobe session! Went back and obtained many analyses of minerals from my first three experiments, and from the three experiments whcih had been done in this lab years ago with similar composition "charges" and at similar pressure and temperature to my experiments. Those experiments were run long enough ago that they had an older microprobe, and they'd missed some of the minerals present, which, as a result, were never analysed, so I'm going back and doing them now. That took seven hours of my day. Then I went home an curled up with a book and some food for a bit before returning to uni and catching up on personal correspondence (my personal e-mail in-box is empty again, two days in a row, and I've also gone back an replied to Facebook messages that had been sitting in a folder awaiting my attention for ages (some nearly for a year). That task accomplished, I returned to uni work and spent another hour going over some of the results, and tabulating things.
My, don't I lead an exciting life?
