Week+of+September+7th-11th

= Week of September 7th- 11th =

9th of September
I went to the lab for about 2 hours 15 minutes. Basically upon arriving in the lab I asked the three grad students Annette, Natalie, and Becky. If I could overlap two images because two images I had gotten Friday the week before appeared to have similar features and yet they showed radical changes. I was being hopeful in proposing this and I showed them the two images. Annette and Natalie both believe that the second image I had taken was actually an entirely different area and only the small upper corner was the same. So they said overlapping the images would show you nothing. I still wish to overlap the two images either way. So the possibility that I had changed the surface of the gold didn't happen. But I still had accomplished the greatest amount of expansion for the gold. I have actually been planning on trying to talk to Alex about the possibility of getting internet for computer that I use because it does not have internet. However it seems that times I have come into lab he was not in the lab or in his office. So I was unable to ask him, but Becky said that they don't have internet because they don't want viruses or anything that could slow down the equipment. I again did some scanning, the scope was driftier than it had been last friday and I was only able to get around 2000 angstroms of expansion when I shot the gold with the laser. Less than half what I had gotten on friday. Shooting the same seemed to make the scope more drifty while on Friday it had less of an effect. I am not sure whether the batteries are starting to lose juice or I just didn't align the laser properly. In fact I realized that the clamp that holds that laser seems to move when you close the box to the scope. When I opened the box the laser was not aiming at the same part of the sample. I need to make a better laser holder.

11th of September
I went to the lab for about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Today was one of those days where nothing really goes well, I probably went through 5-6 tip changes attempeted to scan countless number of times but could only get about 1/3 of a scan window. Even though I changed the tip multiple times I never got a good tip the were just poor to average. I couldn't find a good area on the sample to scan. An area that just has steps like a staircase. I only got one complete scan in the time I was in the lab. That must be a record. Lastly when I shot the sample with the laser the feedback didn't change at all. Which would make sense when I discovered that the laser, for some reason, was not turning on when I pressed the button. It happened to be that the clip just wasn't holding the button down well.

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