RM's+Week+of+September+8

Back RM's School Research

Monday, September 8

I e-mailed my outline to Dr. Lieberman; however, when I called her to follow up on it, she still hadn't received it. So, I e-mailed her another copy. If that doesn't work, I'll ask to have her invited to our SJHSRC Wikispaces or drop-off a hard copy at her office so that she can edit it. The red portions of my outline that I uploaded to this Wikispace are the areas that need definite input and improvement.

Tuesday, September 9

Today was a busy day... First, I met with Dr. Lieberman after school to talk about my outline. We reviewed the goals and directions my research report will take. After speaking with her, I feel that my objectives for the competition need to be altered. I am very thankful for the time she took to review my research outline. So, the plan is that I am going to work on creating histograms and graphs, as well as making a final selection of images, first. At the same time, however, I will also research mathematical papers on polymerization. With these objectives accomplished first, I think the rest of the report will fall into place much more smoothly.

In the evening, I completed my registration for Siemens online, and printed the Confirmation, Supplement, and Mentor pages. I now have a title for my project, and I have begun to fill out some of these forms. Tomorrow, I will have the Confirmation page signed by a school administrator, and I think I will deliver the Mentor pages later this week to Dr. Lieberman. I don't think I have enough of my research report done in order for her to fill out the Mentor form thoroughly.

Wednesday, September 10

Regarding the Confirmation page, I had it signed by my principal today. I decided to drop off the Mentor forms on Friday, after school. Today, I put together some of the data I collected. For example, over the summer, I had measured the lengths and heights of the DNA rafts. This time, however, I counted the number of chains v. the length of the chain. I'm shooting for using the data of 200 chains. I have nearly 100 chains accounted for so far (well, chains AND monomers).

Thursday, September 11

Well, today I counted more chains from my images, totalling more than 100 chains. Next, I made histograms from the data using Microsoft Excel. T here definitely seems to be a type of order to the length of chains. The lengths of the DNA raft chains do not appear to be random, so far. Tomorrow afternoon, I will look at papers that deal with polymerization, in order to put all the data together for the draft of my report. And...modes of communication have been established with Dr. Lieberman! At last, communication is able to go both ways.

Friday, September 12

So, instead of physically going to Notre Dame in the pouring rain and interminable buildup of traffic due to the ND v. Michigan game, I e-mailed the mentor forms to Dr. Lieberman. Next, I researched some papers that I could site in my report, as well as created the histograms of my data. So far, the histograms match up quite well.