AL's+Week+of+January+28

AL's Logbook

__1/28/08__ - [|This link] on the particle adventures site tells of the origins of the discovery of the x ray and radioactivity. The x ray was discovered by the physicist Wilhelm Röntgen, when he struck a piece of metal with electrons. This emitted ray was caused by the release of energy from unstable atom nuclei is called radioactivity.

//[|Protons are positive and electrically repel one another.] A nucleus would blow apart if it weren't "glued" together by the gluon particles which affect every part of the nucleus. This is called the// **//residual strong//** //force.// //Think of a nucleus as a tightly coiled spring which is the electrical repulsion, held in place by a very big rope which is the residual strong force. Even though there is a lot of stored-up energy in the spring, it can't release the energy because the rope is too strong.//

A **gluon** is an elementary particle that binds quarks together which in turn make up the neutrons and protons of the nucleus of an atom.

__1/29/08__ - Today I went to the lab at Notre Dame to continue my project. I made two samples of silicon wafers with just silicon. I then took one of the samples and deposited the __**new**__ (2+98 ul) linearized DNA on the silicon surface.

__1/31/08__ - Today I went to the Lab again to look at the samples that I made on the 29th of January. At the AFM itself computer screen where I was supposed to analyze my sample from the images of the AFM, there were a few errors. First, the laser that is used to track the movement of the cantilever tip refused to focus on the sample. The AFM's "laser gauge" didn't respond to the movements of the laser on my sample. This took quite a while to fix. Afterwards, I encountered another problem from the computer, where the micrscope button the brings up the menu to manipulate the tip somehow disappeared. I eventually had to call someone to come help me fix i, and I ended up having to restart the computer, which I normally shouldn't do. It was around 5:30 by the time I was done fixing all the problems leaving very little real time to analyze my samples, so I will most likely need to redo them next week.