This week I got to work on the optical microscope and look to see how uniform the polymer film samples were. The pictures underneath the microscope were sooo cool! So needless to say this has been my favorite week–because that has been my absolute favorite part. I also ran a large series of films through the ellipsometer and washed them in toluene and I am currently working on measuring them all again for their residual thickness.  I also get to work on the optical microscope again today to see what the films look like after washing. I am soo pumped! And of course as things start to get really interesting, of course it’s time to end my stay here in this lab *sigh*. All in all it was a neat experience and I will miss it, but hopefully I can take back being a stronger researcher to my students. I wish you all a wonderful school year, and it was so nice working with you all! Here are some pictures of the films under microscopy for your viewing pleasure:

Week 2

Update from my last post….

The concentrations of methyl orange after UV from our carbonized cotton sheet showed a decrease over time and confirms our nanocomposite was a success.  We followed up on the previous carbonization technique and ran 2 other samples at 500 degrees in order to prevent the denaturing of the titanium dioxide structure.

This week, our main focus was to modify our loading strategy of titanium dioxide to obtain the maximum amount on our cotton sheet.  After reading some recent research, I came across a sol gel process that could work.  We modified the strategy according to the equipment and chemicals we had available in the lab.  We used titanium IV ethoxide to load the sheet directly and added DCM under anhyrdrous conditions.  The sample was left to stir overnight.  I’m in the process of drying it and hopeful that our results will show an increase in titanium dioxide concentration compared to our previous loading technique.

Until next time!

Our previous results were not what we had anticipated, but we were determined to figure out a better strategy to dope our cotton to show an increase in photo-catalytic activity after carbonizing and exposing our nanocomposite under UV.

We decided to use two samples from 2 different loading techniques.    Sheet “A”  was loaded by allowing the TiO₂ & H₂0 solution (1% w/v) to sonicate for 2 hours before carbonization.

Sheet “E” was carbonized after using the direct loading technique (1:1 wt. ratio) using titanium IV ethoxide, and then dried and cured.

10 ml of (20 ppm) methyl orange was added to each of the sample sheets and we recorded readings for each sample under UV and dark conditions every hour for 5 hours.

Our results showed that Sheet “E” decreased significantly in methyl orange concentrations after the first hour.  Sheet “A” showed slower decrease in methyl orange, however, both sheets under dark conditions showed a small decrease in the dye.  Our next step is to figure out a way to polymerize the cotton so that it will maintain its structure and not dissolve over time in the dye.

This week was super busy!! We were getting our lessons worked out, conferencing with Christina about our lesson sketch, completing our research and finalizing our posters.  It was definitely a sweet break spending time together at our field trip to the Desalination Water Plant. Yay!!  (Sadly, most of us didn’t even know the plant existed!)

It was awesome to learn that our desalination plant is the largest inland plant to date.  It has helped our city in providing water for more people and allowed for the replenishing and conservation of our underground water.   Other states are looking to build inland desalination plants modeled after the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant.  The best thing about the plant is the available education, curriculum, and resources for teachers and the entire community!    They offer curriculum that meets state standards, grade-specific lesson activities, demonstrations and lectures that align with classroom instruction.  The Water resources Learning Center is interactive and a fun way for students to learn about water and the Chihuahuan Desert.  The facility is open to the public free of charge and is an incredible establishment for a fun and educational experience!

We made sure to sign up for their mailing list to post us on activities and scheduled events taking place throughout the year 🙂  We would like to thank everyone at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant for giving us the educational tour (especially Jessica).  Thank you Christina, Dr. Loyo and everyone at NEWT for setting up this field trip.  We had an awesome time!!!

Signing off…

The UTEP NEWT crew

Can’t believe six weeks have gone by so quickly.  It seems like yesterday we were at our orientation and anxiously waiting to begin.   (Kind of don’t want it to end.)  I have enjoyed every bit of the journey.  There’s an air of melancholy as write these lines, yet we must see the end as an accomplishment.

In this last week I have worked on the final draft of my poster and wrapped up all the possible lab work I could.  Too bad we had instrumentation issues, so I could not see the full fruition of our labor.  We were attempting to see if our samples would produce a change/shift in absorbance and fluorescence in detecting TiO2 in water samples.  You know how some instruments work……they have a mind of their own. However, my mentor says he will keep me posted.

Well this it for now!!  Can’t wait to get to Houston!

Special thanks to my mentor Reagan Turley and Primary Investigator Dr Jorge Gardea Torresdey.

Dear Diary

If you recall last week, I wrote about how OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography microscope) could possibly steal my heart from FoMD (Fouling of Membrane Distillation).  Well…it was almost so.  I spent even more time with OCT and everything was going swimmingly when I had the opportunity to use a new scientific toy.  And let me tell you, Diary, it had me all in a flutter.

The new toy is SEM, or the scanning electron microscope, and the images it took for me were absolutely stunning.  SEM and I spent two hours together getting to know one another and it was wonderful.  SEM likes spectrometry, photography, Fifty Shades of Gray, and chillin’ in nice cool rooms.  I guess I should explain those interests a little bit more to you, Diary.  SEM can do spectrometry of samples which is scanning them to determine what elements are present and roughly the quantity; this is useful to help determine the type of minerals that are precipitating out of the salty water in FoMD (see the first time I wrote to you, Diary, for more details about FoMD).  SEM can take images that are magnified over 10,000x meaning one micrometer (10^-6 meters) appears to be one-centimeter in length.  To put it another way, imagine taking a picture of your foot and enlarging it so that your foot is nearly two miles long so now you can see each individual skin cell on your foot since they will be about the length of your arm…Well not your foot and arm, Diary, because you’re a diary; you don’t have feet or arms.  The photographs are amazing but they are all in gray-scale; see what I did there in listing SEM’s interests (don’t worry, I’ll pat myself on the back).  The room that SEM lives in is nice and cool, around 70^oF which feels awesome after walking a quarter mile in the 110^oF+ heat we have.

Here’s some samples of images that SEM and I took together.  The magnification is shown in the bottom left and the white bar in the bottom center shows you the scale of the image.  SEM and I didn’t take any 10,000x magnified images; only up to 5,000x magnification.  The first one, 300x magnification, shows what appears to be two different crystals forming.  There are long and thin crystals near the top of the image and short and thick crystals near the center.

The next image, about 1000x magnification shows that a short and thick crystal is actually thin in the 3^rd direction, noticeable in the bottom of the image.  This means that the short crystals could actually be the same crystals as the long ones but oriented differently and shorter.

The 5000x magnified image shows that there are even smaller crystals that were still forming when the FoMD experiment was stopped.

The spectrometry shows that there was carbon, oxygen, sulfur, and calcium present which is what I was expecting.  It also showed chlorine present and no magnesium present which I was not expecting.  This means that my previous models might be wrong but I’m not going to make such a claim based off of only one sample.

SEM likes to take things slow, a little too slow for me.  After two hours together we only analyzed two samples.  I was hoping to get to four samples but SEM said we were out of time.  As I was leaving, another person was coming in to use SEM.  I was hurt so I told SEM that it had to choose either this other “engineer” or me.  Luckily for me, SEM said it would see me again on Monday.  I hate to brag, Diary, but no scientific equipment can resist my charm.

I’ll write to you again next week, Diary. – Chay

The answer……………..yes there is.  Great progress for the lesson portion of the internship.

Yesterday we were able to produce a simple aqueous extraction of cilantro. Filtered and centrifuged the extraction to remove any impurities, which can be seen below:

After purifying the extraction then we placed it to a test.

In Sample 4 we have iron chloride and potassium thiocyanate, which produces a nice bright red color due to the thiocyanate reacting with the free iron atoms in solution.  Sample 5 was conducted by adding the iron chloride and the extract at once.  The potassium thiocyanate was introduced to the sample and no color change.

Sample 6 was conducted by adding the iron solution and potassium thiocyanate producing a color change as seen in Sample 4 (bright red).  Once the extract was introduced to the sample it produced a color change resulting as the one in Sample 5.  Thus, demonstrating the chelating properties of Cilantro.  Tomorrow I will be posting a video of these results.  So excited to see this occur.  Until tomorrow.

WOOT! ok, so the new plan is going to be so awesome.  It is completely centered around professional development and the collaboration of all 6,7,8 science teachers at my middle school.  We never have the time to really talk about our curriculums and how they build one another which is a shame because I wish I could tell my 6th graders what they could expect or have 7th grade teachers expand on something we did in 6th grade.  The plan is to have a professional development activity where 6th grade science teachers will have the 7th and 8th grade teachers participate in our water unit filtration system activity.  The objective would be for them to build and see what the kids learn and then have them all brainstorm how they could enhance the engineering project within their curriculum.

The second professional development which would occur within a few weeks is to have a faculty member or RET teacher come and complete another engineering or water treatment type of lesson that would be taught to all 6,7,8 teachers and we would discuss how we would be able to incorporate the idea within our classes.  The idea being that we are scaffolding the lesson across the 3 grade levels.  Currently, 8th grade is on a whole different level of experiments and labs that 6th grade cannot create. There is a lot lost in 7th grade either because of the teacher themselves not completing rigorous labs/ activities or they do not have a lesson or a resource in order to complete an activity.

NEWT will be introduced, scarcity of water will be introduced, engineering and STEM will tie together and this idea will help to make the connection throughout the three years stronger and more effective.  There is also a huge lack of professional development for science teachers where we can actually engineer and create.  Because of this internship, I have amazing resources here to use.  YAY!

Potential staff: University Research Scientist, RET intern, PH.D student,  Grad Student.

This idea is meant to be universal with the intent that other middle schools can take advantage of a collaboration amongst grade levels.  Middle school is such an important imprinting time to a child.  It is within these years that students’ minds are shaped and their academic outlook is molded so when they move into highschool they have more confidence going into science specific classes.  They outlook is more positive.  With that, we can hopefully expand the desire to learn in the math and sciences, both genders,  all ethnicities, simply by collaborating throughout all years.

Hello, fellow NEWT and RET interns!

We have been really busy over here in the Material Science Labs. In my last post, I told you all a little bit about the samples we are working with, which is Cubic Boron Nitride (c-BN). I also told you all that the main goal is to dope this material with the highly electronegative element, Fluorine. We have made several samples, all of which with different concentrations of our fluorinating material.

Our mission now is to run a series of tests on our newly created Fluorinated Cubic Boron Nitride (F c-BN) and attempt to understand the new structure and its properties.

One test we’ve run is an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. This machine tells us what elements are within our compound. Based on the results of this machine, being the peaks given via X-ray absorption, my mentor was able to determine that our newly formed compound does, in fact, have fluorine. This means that the process designed by my mentor is an effective procedure for doping c-BN.

Other tests we have run are Raman Spectroscopy as well as IR spectroscopy. Both of these machines give us insight into the bonding structure of the compound. We have also put our samples through an X-ray diffractor, this is a machine only utilized to examine 3D crystal structures. This machine will give us insight into how the compound is structured within 3D space. These three machines are highly complex and the data we have must be carefully analyzed. My mentor and I plan to spend time next week analyzing the data from these three devices and trying to put together a working theory for how the structure is bonded together and possibly a working theory as to the compound’s overall structure.

On Monday of next week, we plan to run a hardness test as well as a thermal conductivity test. This will give us insight to how the properties of c-BN change upon fluorination. The hardness test is especially exciting for c-BN is the second hardest compound in existence, second only to diamond. The hope is that by fluorinating the material, the hardness will increase, possibly making this new material even harder than diamond.

Below are a few pictures of the devices we have been using to conduct our tests. I hope you are all having a great time in the lab with your research!

Howdy everyone,

This week I got to do a lot more ellipsometry and another brief round of flow coating. This time when I used the flow coater I did a much better job. It feels good to accomplish a goal! Improvement–check! You have to have a steady hand when pippetting out the polymer solution to be cast across the silica wafer uniformly. Otherwise you get these very pretty rainbow colors everywhere–which means your coat did not come out uniformly at all. Again the color on these wafers is a general indication of the thickness, so if the colors are all over the spectrum, it is going to be difficult to get an accurate read on the thickness.

During this experience I have also had the opportunity to go to a few lab meetings which is always cool. Different lab members present on what they have been working on. I enjoy getting to see the research that other people are doing. Seeing what ingenious things people are thinking about and working on really just gets me excited. I think that’s why I lead up the STEM Club at my school and really try and encourage my kiddos to get plugged into as many opportunities as possible. Which reminds me, I can’t wait to see you all at the symposium to learn more about what kind of research you guys have had the opportunity to be involved in this summer. =) Enjoy your weekend!

Getting better at using the flow coater.

Less uniform spots on the left, more uniform spots on the right. Edge effect is okay and happens especially since these are smaller samples (this effect will theoretically be less in much larger samples), but we desire at least a significant spot of uniform color.