Get high, get low.

This last weekend Nate, Noah, myself, and one of Noah's friends took a trip to High Falls. Its name a testament to southern creativity, High Falls is a stream that goes over a 40ft drop. It's actually an amazing geologic formation, and perfect for, well... jumping off of.

Before we got there, however, one of the cars' transmissions exploded so we had a brief detour into smalltown Alabama via tow truck. There wasn't room in the truck for all 4 of us, so Noah and Nate rode the rest of the way in the bed.

Noah's mobile "box" speakers.Nate and Noah in the truck bed at 75mph

Once we got there, the weather was perfect, hot but sometimes overcast. Just as we were leaving a huge rainstorm started, so the drive back was interesting.

Nate would take 10-15 minutes to get the "courage" to jump

I jumped off once from where that person's legs are on the above picture. But that was enough. I guess not getting scared/freaking out made the experience less thrilling for me or something. Plus hitting the water hurts.

DeSoto was here... or not.

Jeremey, Nate, and I took a trip south to DeSoto Cavern. I guess DeSoto was one of the first (European) people to explore here, but I don't think he actually saw the cave. The cave has a long history of use, first by the natives, then by various people, including confederates mining gunpowder and then ask a speakeasy during prohibition.

Now-a-days it's a tourist attraction. The tour wasn't quite worth the money ($15 or so, can't remember), but it was pretty cool. At the largest point it's 10 stories tall and a few hundred yards long. Half way through there was a light/water show that was pretty cheesy, but to top it off they played a recording of music with someone reciting genesis over it... at the end everything went dark and a cross lit up on the wall. But then again, we're in freakin' ALABAMA so what do you expect? I guess the best part of the cave was that is was pretty cool in there.

Afterwards we went to the gift shop and got some ice cream, and on the way back we stopped at a flea market, to get the authentic Alabama experience.







Available in the gift shop: let me know if I should pick one up for you!

The Usual Suspects

Our dorm room is apartment-style, with a small living room, tiny kitchen, and 3 bedrooms with 2 beds each. My partners in crime are the other 5 guys (we don't really see the other people in the program much). We do stuff like go to Walmart (a very popular activity down here), play Poker/Risk, and watch movies. Here's our excursion to Mr. Wang's Chinese Buffet:
Nathaniel(Nate), senior physics major from Carnegie Mellon U. He's also the kicker on the football team, and he (surprise, surprise) likes rap. He's the guy that's usually making goofy/inappropriate gestures during pictures. Plus he's from New York and Jewish. His project is on nanoparticles for creating bone scaffolds.
Noah is a sophomore physics major from U. West Georgia. He grew up in a small town in GA called Tallapoosa, but he's not a stereotypical southerner, although he does have the accent. He has a red bmx bike that he rides around. His project is on creating nanoparticle magnets for cancer therapies.
Alan (pronounced uh-lawn) is a senior physics major, also from UWG. He's originally from Texas, though, and has a Bush sticker on his Mustang. He's working on laser-related projects.

Brad is the baby of the group, an 18-year-old sophomore from here at UAB. He's currently a physics major, but will soon be switching to psychology. Brad showed us around the first few days, but he doesn't really know where much is since he doesn't have a car.

Not pictured: Jeremy, my roommate, a senior physics major from Bob Jones U (SC). He's originally from Philly, and is into shooting/fishing/hunting/etc. He won some kind of national junior rifle tournament in high school. His car (below) usually takes us on our excursions around Birmingham.
The crew in action, picking me up from Five Points for a trip to Walmart.

Signs of my times

I've been walking around Birmingham, and have found some interesting signs (no photoshopping required):

What exactly do ya do here?

So, the reason I'm here. Don't worry, I'll try to keep this as straight-forward and non-technical as possible. However, feel free to follow the links for more detailed information.

I'm working with Dr. Mary Ellen Zvanut in the Physics department. She specializes in analysis of electronic materials, ones that may be of use sometime in the future. Although she has primarily been working on the potential of using Silicon Carbide (SiC) for high frequency/high temperature electonics, she has just started working with aother material called Strontium Titanate (SrTiO3), which is what my project is on.

Strontium Titanate is an interesting material. It was used in the past as a diamond substitute because the way it refracts light is very similar, but it isn't anywhere near as hard. It's also a superconductor at fairly low temperatures. What Dr. Zvanut is researching is the possibility of usuing this material as a multifunctional material.

What is a multifunctional material? In our computers and electronics today, there are three main kinds of components: electrical (most components), magnetic (hard drives), and optical (lasers, fiber optics). Currently, all these things are separate components that are kind of interconnected. Multifunction materials combine two or more of these properties for new materials that will be able to... Well, I'm not actually sure about that part yet. But something new and revolutionary.

So what is my part in all this? Nothing glorious or mad-scientist-like (no Frankenstein here...), but it's interesting nonetheless. What I'm using is something called Electon Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) to analyze small defects in the material. And by small, I mean like a few parts per billion. There are very small impurities of iron and chromium in the material that can make huge differences in the properties of the materials. In adding small amounts of impurities to silicon is what has allowed virtually every electonic item today to function.

The EPR

Me at the EPR computer

The EPR is basically a pair of really big magnets that can detect these defects. What I do is mount the sample using rubber cement (hey, but it's Elmer's rubber cement...), put it in the machine, and run a bunch of scans at different angles and such. Then I anneal the sample (i.e. put it in a furnace) at 400, 570, 750, and 930 degrees F, (man, that would burn the pizza real good), and then do the scans again.

Furnace with vacuum system

The furnace above goes up to 2200 degrees F, and the vacuum system goes to 0.0000002 psi (about 12 billionths of atmospheric pressure).

At this point I'm not really sure what the results will be or what it will mean, but I still have like seven weeks to figure that out, right?

Some other cool stuff:

Me with a tank of Liquid Helium, stored below -450 degrees F. Colder than Idaho!
Physics stuff

The lab

A big pile of junk

Anyways, if you want more details about the work, please feel free to send me an email.