Week+of+Oct.+29+Log+Book

-Oct. 29, 30- Right now I am at a bit of a stand-still until I meet with Dr. Lamm at Notre Dame so I have just been doing a bit of reading and reviewing until I meet with him tomorrow.

-Oct. 31- Today I met with Dr. Lamm at the Nuclear Structure Lab at Notre Dame. It was a great meeting and we got a lot of things taken care of. First I will need to come up with some projects that I can do concerning PIXE. These will be analytical type projects where I will analyze the data the the PIXE produces. I will have to schedule time in the lab so that I can use their machine and programs. I also need to have an introductory meeting with Dr. Ed Stech because he has a hand in the program at Notre Dame.

-Nov. 1- Today I was looking at possibilities for my project. I may be able to do something with the examination of water. You can evaporate it onto something and then analyse what may be in the water. I found this to be interesting because we may have things in our water that should not be there or it may just show us what is actually in our water that does not harm us.

-Nov. 2- Today I continued to look at project choices. Mr. M was talking to Dr. Lamm and me about platinum in soil from cars. I also found this to be interesting but when Mr. M took a sample of soil he found that there probably isnt enough concentration for it to be evident in PIXE analysis. The platinum in the soil is probably in parts per billion when we need it to be anywhere from 10-100 parts per million.