Brian: Alabamy Bound: July 2006

Posters!

Yesterday we did our 15 minute powerpoint presentations for the physics program, and today was the school-wide poster competition.

The real purpose of scientific posters is as a didgeridoo.

Patiently aiting for the action to begin. Except for Nate.

I'd been asking Nate for a while what his nanoparticles tasted like...

For the physics entries, I got 3rd place! Yay.

Nate was honorable mention, with Alan getting 1st and Noah 2nd.

And last but not least, Nate started a tradition of putting his artistic touches on hard boiled eggs. Note "The South Lost," "Get Over It" and drawings of everyone in the dorm room.

Work's done, now what?

Well, my poster is printed, my paper is submitted, and my powerpoint presentation is saved. I'm pretty much done with the actual work. All that's left is to present my powerpoint thing tomorrow, present my poster the next day, and then I'm OUTTA here. FOR-EV-ER.

If you'd like to puruse my work since I've been at UAB,
here's a link to my 10 page research paper
here's a link to my 4x3 foot poster
to view these files you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader

I it's pretty in-depth, removed from reality kind of stuff, but the simplest I can describe it is that potentially someday this could contribute to electric and magnetic components on a single chip. If that means anything to you.

And if you were wondering, yes, I did try to put as many big, fancy sounding words in the title as I could find. But scientific papers are a little sneaky like that--"heat treatments" just means I put the sample in a (glorified) oven for an hour at a time.

Anyway, this may be my penultimate post, so I hope you've enjoyed it thus far.

And for you people that are just here for the pictures, about a month ago I walked over to "Vulcan Park," where they have "The Largest Cast-Iron Statue in the World." I think it was constructed for the St. Louis World's Fair a long time ago... maybe in the Dark Ages. Or at least in a time before they invented underwear.

I just had to take a picture of this old photo. I mean, a huge, iron flying butt? How often do you get to see that?

Winding Down

Things are winding down here. We submitted our posters Thursday, our 10 page paper is due Tuesday, our 15 minute presentations are Wednesday, the poster competition is Thursday, and I fly out Friday afternoon. Plus I have a gig the next day with Milonga in Moses Lake and the Jazz Camp at EWU starts.

Here's a few more random pictures:

Noah using the Force to ride his bike into the dorm

I went to elementary school in Greenacres...

Video!

I just discovered how to post videos on the internet (pretty easy, using Youtube.com), here's some videos I've taken here:
(Flash 8 is requred, download here)

All my dormmates going out to eat the the first/last time. From R-->L:
Noah, Nate, Jeremy, Brad, Lindsey, Alan, and Andrea.
Live music in the backround was great:

What Noah really thinks, taken at our 4th of July BBQ.

Throwing the football on the 4th. Maybe the physics department should start a football team.

Noah Jumping off of High Falls (see a previous post)

Nate jumping

This train almost ran us over while we were at DeSoto Caverns.

World Cup 2006

Well, you probably missed the World Cup Final today, unlike a billion other people (literally). It was France v Italy, but fortunately you can watch this clip:

Barb-E-Q

Eri and I got back into Birmingham ("ain't no 'ham like Birmingham") in time for the 4th, just in time for a BBQ. Brad fashioned some tasty burgers with all sorts of goodies mixed in, in addition to hot dogs, corn, and Eye of Newt. We BBQed at small asylum inbetween some dorms.

Mmmmm, food

Noah explaining to us how the thermodynamic pressure exerted by the tertiary gravometric excitons create ferroelectric vortices at the orthorhombic vertices.

Noah contemplating nonuniform multispectral waveguides. Or how seedless watermellons can possibly exist.

Laura from the program and one of Brad's friend Lea.
Laura's attending school in the South, but she's from Toronto, was born in England, and her parents are from Jamaica.

Watermellon!

Jeremy making fireballs come out of a bottle

After kicking around the soccer ball and throwing the football (at the same time), we needed to cool down from the 95 degree heat. Luckily, there's a swimming pool at the dorm.

Nate decided to practice his football moves on Noah, much to Noah's surprise.

Notice Brad fleeing the scene.

The swimmers telling Brad "Hey, could you help us tie our shoes?"

Brad, at a safe distance

All in all, the day was "Tons of Fun"

Into the Woods

Last weekend my girlfriend Eri flew in for the 6-day weekend--she also attends U of I, but she's doing an REU internship at MIT in Boston. So we decided to take a trip to the wilderness and go camping. After five hours in Walmart (the minor highway we took had 4 Super Walmarts in a 70 mile stretch), we finally made it away from civilization. Not that there's much civilization here--I mean, it's freakin' ALABAMA.

Anyway, we spent 3 nights and 3 days in the Sipsey Wilderness before getting too hungry, tired, and bug-bitten. After setting up camp at 2am, we realized that the trail area we were at (which Eri dubbed "Tick Heaven") sucked. Luckily we found some friendly people who showed us other areas that were really nice, including some trails along the Sipsey River. The summer here has been really dry, so the river was more like a creek and most of the waterfalls were dry, but it was nice anyhow.

A little strange how the dedication looks like a tombstone...

"Tick Heaven"

A furry bug that wandered onto us

Eri examining the flora

We met Arthur and his son Carl after our initial mistep into Tick Heaven. They were extremely nice and knowledegable about the wilderness, and they offered to get us on the right track and show us around. We hiked with them for an hour or so before parting company, but we were very lucky to have met them. Our heartiest thanks to them.