AL's+Week+of+December+3

AL's Logbook

__12/4/07__ - Today in the lab the AFM was broken so I couldn't do anything.

__12/5/07__ - Worked on Milestone Outline, thinking of ways to plan my milestone out.

__12/6/07__ - Today I wrote a rough outline for my milestone to turn into Dr. Loughran. This is my outline:

1.) Understanding large purpose and goal of the project 2.) Summarize Scientific Papers you’ve read for background information 3.) Procedure so far 4.) Results so far 5.) Discuss Results 6.) Immediate goals and standards of project

In the lab I spent the whole time in the AFM trying to get images of linearized DNA on mica, but to no avail. The AFM was acting up and I couldn't get any clear images. I was, however, able to take one or two good images of plain mica for comparative value against future mica samples actually with DNA.

The DNA structure on mica is very clear and so it is a good substrate to use when studying the physical properties of the linearized DNA such as length and general shape that you can't see very well on silicon. This is why I'm trying to see the DNA now on mica, but only for one or two samples. The reason we use silicon as opposed to mica is that mica is not a semiconductor, so the DNA wouldn't be able to be used in further nanotechnology research in the direction that we want which is to use DNA to run electrical currents as circuitry. It must correctly be studied on silicon.