july 23, 2008

The thing about working with a scanning tunneling microscope is that it allows you to image atoms and molecules, but there's nothing that explicitly tells you what you're looking at. Thus, I spent the whole day looking at what I thought to be the molecule I was dosing, but turned out just to be junk on the surface of the gold crystal. I was concerned that the molecules I was seeing didn't look like what I would have expected.

There's good news: at 4pm, after the fourth dose of the day, I found something that looked more like what I expected! In fact, I found two such somethings! That means tomorrow I will dose again to see if even more such things show up.

I LOVE SCIENCE. What I did today was fun and awesome!

I should also remind everyone that I am running the instrument on my own for the first time ever, so the fact that I can figure out how to make everything work should impress you greatly.

3 comments:

W said...

I'm very impressed. Now, what's a molecule?

Tracy said...

Did I ever tell you that I got a "D" in Chemistry 102 in college? I quickly changed my major to Accounting. There's something that I can do. I sure can count.

Anonymous said...

i exempted my science requirements in college due to the AP Physics exam in high school -- 8 hours credit without doing anything -- that sure was nice

by the way, i really don't like science that much, but i sure am glad there are people who do!!!