Some Time Away
It has been some time since my last blog post. The reason for that is that I have not been able to go to my location. During the first week for my inactivity, the laboratory that I work in was under construction and repair. A couple of weeks back, the FIB Microscope had an update which I was present for, however, during this repair, I was told that my work space would not be available. From my understanding, the FIB machine was taken apart and checked on. They also replaced some of the parts such as the Ion Beam source for the Focused Ion Beam. Due to this, I opted out of visiting the LPL and instead started my presentation for Dr. Wallace's FIB group. I will expand on this topic later.
During the second week, my adviser, Dr. Wallace, was out, and without his supervision, I opted out of visiting the LPL once more. I took this time to continue working on the presentation. From my understanding of this project, I will be presenting a tutorial on the Texture Elemental Analytical Microscopy Software, or TEAM Software. When the EDAX service came to the LPL a couple of weeks ago, the computers in the LPL were given videos that they should have had access to, but unfortunately never had in the past. These videos contained tutorials on the TEAM Software that none of the professors and students here have seen. I have spent some time watching them the week they were downloaded, and I continued to watch them over the past week. Using these tutorials, I will use the techniques they show while analyzing some samples, and then use those experiences to create my own TEAM tutorial specializing in Backscatter analysis. Since I have not had much experience using the TEAM Software, I have not gotten very far in the construction of this presentation. In the weeks to come, I will have more samples and more time on the FIB and I will further construct the presentation as time goes by.
Since I have missed a couple of blog posts in the past few weeks, I have decided to write two more this week. I have had a busy week at the LPL and because of that I have a lot to talk about. When I came in to the LPL on Tuesday, Dr. Wallace told me I had three tasks:
1. Help Dr. Zega find and export some data he will be using for a paper from the FIB computer. There were other complications along the way which I will expand on in my blog post tomorrow.
2. Help clean up an image that will later be printed and put on the wall of the new LPL Basement. With the construction they have been doing for the last couple of months, the LPL has also decided that they are going to decorate the walls of the hallway with pictures that describe parts of their individual sciences. This image I cleaned up happens to be one of those pictures.
3. Learn how to polish a sample. Prajkta helped me polish my first sample yesterday and in my third blog post, I will share the method and process of me polishing the Ni sample I will be analyzing at a later date.
