January 18, 2012
Today was our last day of WISE and my last blog! We mostly just worked on my presentation once again, and I was able to ask any last questions that I had. I asked about little things that I needed a little bit of clarification about so I wouldn't present it wrong for the presentation. I worked on my presentation for about two hours. He helped me find other pictures that I could use, and he gave me some ideas about how I could expand my presentation. Then we made one last gradient that one of the people in his lab needed for their project. It was just really cool how much easier it was to make the gradient now than it was in the beginning of the semester. It was really strange that it was the last time I would ever be in the lab!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Day 26
Tuesday January 17, 2012
This was my last day working at the Homewood Campus! Once again, all we did today was work on our presentations. JM helped Seung Ha while I worked by myself. A lot of the time though JM had to help another person in his lab with their project, so mostly Seung Ha and I were alone in the lab working on our presentations. It was actually very nice to be given that much time to work on it because it relieved a lot of my stress. I mostly worked on the written report and the notecards that I'm going to use when presenting my powerpoint. I pretty much almost finished the written part which was great. Sorry this is really short but that pretty much summed up my day!
This was my last day working at the Homewood Campus! Once again, all we did today was work on our presentations. JM helped Seung Ha while I worked by myself. A lot of the time though JM had to help another person in his lab with their project, so mostly Seung Ha and I were alone in the lab working on our presentations. It was actually very nice to be given that much time to work on it because it relieved a lot of my stress. I mostly worked on the written report and the notecards that I'm going to use when presenting my powerpoint. I pretty much almost finished the written part which was great. Sorry this is really short but that pretty much summed up my day!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Day 25
Wednesday January 10, 2012
We didn't do much on Wednesday. For most of the time, JM helped Seung Ha with her project while I was able to do my work. This was all we did for the first two hours. He wanted to make sure that we could actually do a little bit today, so he let us decide what we wanted to do. We chose that we wanted to work with liquid nitrogen again. I've said this in a previous blog but the liquid nitrogen is really cool because the gas is denser than air, so the gas sinks to the ground. Previously, he has showed us how to freeze the liquid nitrogen. This time, he showed us how to thaw it. All that he did was place a small tube of it into a water bath and whirl it around until it unfroze. Then he placed it into a machine to see the size of the particles. The particles ended up being a bit larger than what he expected. They were around 80 nanometers while he expected them to be around 50 or 60 nanometers. I know it's not much but this was all we really did today.
We didn't do much on Wednesday. For most of the time, JM helped Seung Ha with her project while I was able to do my work. This was all we did for the first two hours. He wanted to make sure that we could actually do a little bit today, so he let us decide what we wanted to do. We chose that we wanted to work with liquid nitrogen again. I've said this in a previous blog but the liquid nitrogen is really cool because the gas is denser than air, so the gas sinks to the ground. Previously, he has showed us how to freeze the liquid nitrogen. This time, he showed us how to thaw it. All that he did was place a small tube of it into a water bath and whirl it around until it unfroze. Then he placed it into a machine to see the size of the particles. The particles ended up being a bit larger than what he expected. They were around 80 nanometers while he expected them to be around 50 or 60 nanometers. I know it's not much but this was all we really did today.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Day 24
January 10, 2012
All we did today was work on my presentation, but it was EXTREMELY helpful and took a lot of stress off of me. Kellin helped me through all of the questions that need to be answered. Then, he helped me find important pictures that would be useful in the powerpoint. Meanwhile, I put the powerpoint together by placing the information of the correct slide. I also was able to begin working on my written report. Even though I've been working on the same project for almost an entire semester, his reiteration of all the details really helped clarify the little confusing parts that I've always thought were a bit abstruse to me. He helped me work on my presentation all up until it was time to go.
All we did today was work on my presentation, but it was EXTREMELY helpful and took a lot of stress off of me. Kellin helped me through all of the questions that need to be answered. Then, he helped me find important pictures that would be useful in the powerpoint. Meanwhile, I put the powerpoint together by placing the information of the correct slide. I also was able to begin working on my written report. Even though I've been working on the same project for almost an entire semester, his reiteration of all the details really helped clarify the little confusing parts that I've always thought were a bit abstruse to me. He helped me work on my presentation all up until it was time to go.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Day 23
January 4, 2012
I did not write a post for yesterday because I did not do anything because my mentor was not there.
Today we worked with polymers and experimented to find the best way to make a sphere shaped cell. Polymers are mulitple positively charged monomers put together. Polymers have little legs on them called PEGs. PEGs aprevent negatively charged nanoparticles from clinging to the polymer and clump together. However, the more PEGs, the more worm-shaped the polymer is. We want to make the polymer sphere though because sphere shaped polymers last longer when injected into the blood. The sphere shape copes better with the flow of blood cells then the worm shape does. So the question is how many PEGs have to be cut off from the polymer in order to make it spherical but to keep enough PEGs on to prevent other particles from clinging with the polymer? This is what we are trying to find out. It will take several trials to finally figure it out. We just did one trial today. JM made a polymer and then placed them into a syringe. The syringe very rapidly spins the nanoparticles in order to change their shape. After about a half hour, we placed the particles into a different machine that calculates the number and size of the nanoparticles. Apparently, the polymer nanoparticles ended up being a little too be. Each was 170 nanometers big but we were hoping for about 60 or 70 nanometers. This may have meant that the particles hadn't completely changed into a spherical shape yet and are still in the worm form. We didn't have enough time to do another trial, so we talked about the presentation for a few minutes. Even though I will not be presenting on this project, we discussed how he thinks we should make our powerpoints and how to prepare for the oral presentation.
I did not write a post for yesterday because I did not do anything because my mentor was not there.
Today we worked with polymers and experimented to find the best way to make a sphere shaped cell. Polymers are mulitple positively charged monomers put together. Polymers have little legs on them called PEGs. PEGs aprevent negatively charged nanoparticles from clinging to the polymer and clump together. However, the more PEGs, the more worm-shaped the polymer is. We want to make the polymer sphere though because sphere shaped polymers last longer when injected into the blood. The sphere shape copes better with the flow of blood cells then the worm shape does. So the question is how many PEGs have to be cut off from the polymer in order to make it spherical but to keep enough PEGs on to prevent other particles from clinging with the polymer? This is what we are trying to find out. It will take several trials to finally figure it out. We just did one trial today. JM made a polymer and then placed them into a syringe. The syringe very rapidly spins the nanoparticles in order to change their shape. After about a half hour, we placed the particles into a different machine that calculates the number and size of the nanoparticles. Apparently, the polymer nanoparticles ended up being a little too be. Each was 170 nanometers big but we were hoping for about 60 or 70 nanometers. This may have meant that the particles hadn't completely changed into a spherical shape yet and are still in the worm form. We didn't have enough time to do another trial, so we talked about the presentation for a few minutes. Even though I will not be presenting on this project, we discussed how he thinks we should make our powerpoints and how to prepare for the oral presentation.
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