BB's+2009+-+'10+Logbook

PIXE Lab Booktoc

09-10 Logbooks

PIXE

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BB's 2009 Fall Milestone MapPowerpoint of final

8/25
Last year I able to take both AP Physics and AP Calculus. I enjoy both math and science. I like all sciences, but the ones i typically like the most are the more mathematical sciences like chemistry or physics. This summer i did PIXE PAN. It was only a week long, barely enough time to figure out what was going on. This afternoon, Tuesday, I talked to Ed Stech about possibly doing research with PIXE for science reseach. He said we could work that out, but he wanted more information about what the end goal of this class is.

8/27
My schedule has been busy lately, but today I was able to briefly talk to Mr. Mankowski. He told me that he did help do PIXE a couple years ago. He also mentioned a Dr. Lam, i hope thats how you spell it, i never actually had Mr. Mankowski write his name down. Mr. Mankowski told me to contact Dr. Lam because he is in charge of the accelerator and was the person who previously helped with the Science research/PIXE project. He said Dr. Lam could possibly give me a direction to go to in.

8/29
This summer I applied to the PIXE-PAN summer program at Notre Dame. The program was a week long. During the week we did 4-5 experiments, one of those being PIXE. The others experiments had similar ideas to that of PIXE. For the smaller experiments we used radioactive materials the energy coming off to see what elements we were looking at. We then had a crash course on what PIXE was and what it can do. It was barely enough time to mentally digest all the information that was being given to us. But they explained how the accelerator works. We did experiments with PIXE where we put some unknown substance or metal in front of the proton beam. Xrays would come off the metal and we would figure out what elements an object is composed of from the Xrays by knowing how they correspond to specific elements. As a final project my group had to give a presentation on Alpha Spectroscopy, one of the other experiments we did. I still have that powerpoint. So during this program we were shown a basic example of what PIXE does. I know that they use PIXE for astro-physics. I would like see if I can do some experiments related to astrophysics.

9/1
B, I took the liberty of embedding your ppt as a google doc. Next to that presentation is a screencast of how I did it, so you can follow the pattern for future presentations.
 * media type="custom" key="4533982" || media type="custom" key="4302597" ||

This is my powerpoint on alpha spectroscopy. You are not gonna see much in the way of content. My group was trying to display our pictures and data mostly and while the pictures were on the screen we talk about the experiment, and how we got the data, and what our conclusions were. Basically we had a radioactive alpha decay source. We measured the energy of the alpha particles and the change of energies with certain known thicknesses and types of foils.

9/2 -- TL entry: B: here are some relevant portions from the PIXE pages in this wiki. Your next step should be to read and comment on these pages:

[|Jina Site]. This site is done by the PIXE program at Notre Dame. It is a very informative site. Go to the lectures/materials link on the left hand side. It explains a lot. [|Harvard PIXE]. This site is part of the Harvard research program. It does a nice job of explaing uses and different things about it. [|x-ray non-destructive.pdf] This is an interesting and informative file that explains PIXE in a wordy scientific way

9/6
I emailed Ed Stech and set up a meeting with him on wednesday afternoon of this next week so we can discus what my project will be for Science Research. He also said he would talk to Dr. Lamm.

9/8
I read the pdf, [|x-ray non-destructive.pdf]. It was very informative. I knew most of what the first page was talking about already. The rest was new to me. I thought the explanations of possible applications was very interesting. I had never thought of the possibility of biological uses. I have always seen it for its geological and archeological uses instead, which is what i would rather look into any way.

9/11
Two days ago, on Wednesday, I had a meeting in the Niewland Science Hall with Dr. Ed Stech. Our meeting was to discuss possible project ideas that I might be able to pursue for Science Research. I had been thinking I would want to do something with astro-physics. I feel the meeting went very well even though we decided to scratch the idea of astro-physics. I have decided to go in a different direction. There are four projects I could potentially do and they are as follows:
 * 1) Look at the elemental makeup of industrial processed meat, and more specifically the elemental make up compared to local, organic meats;
 * 2) Look at mercury levels in fish from lake Michigan;
 * 3) Look at how plants absorbs certain metals from their soil;
 * 4) Help with the project currently underway at PIXE; The current project is more engineering based, they are developing a way for PIXE to instead of looking at a single point and taking data, to be able to move the beam in a way as to map out sequential points;

9/20
media type="custom" key="4411581" I am going to elaborate on the previous post. This You Tube video is the movie trailer for the film titled "Food, Inc." This film and others is where i derived my ideas for possible projects, or at least the first idea. The other ideas branched from that first idea. The film's focus was on the big business farms and their methods for achieving the big profits. The big farms are only interested in the bigger crop yields and bigger animals because that leads to more profit, at least while they do not let the consumer understand how the farms are achieving the bigger crops and bigger animals. These methods that the farms use include disgusting animal confinement, lots of bacteria, a multitude of chemicals that supposedly kill the bacteria, and animals being fed with food they should not eat. Idea #1 was me taking this problem on a more personal and local level. I wanted to use PIXE to analyze the meat, to see if there are any impurities or contaminants. I wanted to look at both the industrial meats and locally farmed meats to see which one is healthier. From that both the fish idea, where i would look at mercury levels, and the plant idea, where i would look at how plants absorb metals from their soil, sprung up.

On a different note, last wednesday I had another meeting with Ed. I have decided to take up idea #2. I figure if i have an opportunity there, then I should take it. I told Ed about the idea of burning the source before scanning it with PIXE. He said that was a good idea, but was not sure where one was. He thought that since Dr. L offered it, he might know where one is on campus.

9/27
I made a checklist for myself. I think this will be helpful for me because I can see what I need to get done. I figure I can keep adding to the end of the checklist whenever I have something new come up and keep this checklist up through the whole year.

10/8
Last week on Friday, Dr. L introduced me to Mike Brueseke. He is a research technician in the department of Biological studies. Mike was able to help me progress in my project because I now have a way to prepare the fish for experiments with PIXE. Mike has a drying oven to first dry the fish. He then also has an incinerator to burn the fish to ash. This preserves the fish- atleast the part of it that I want- and allows easier transportation of the fish. I have also made an online lab book for my experiments with PIXE.

10/10
I have started my online lab book just so I could have the information up there. I plan on reorganizing it later.

10/16
I had a meeting with Ed this wednesday. I updated him on my situation with the preparation of the fish samples. I told him the procedure of the drying ovens and the incinerators. We did a test run of the ash of the fish, but we ran out of time and i was not able to analyze the data collected. I plan to do that at our next meeting. He also let me know that there is someone in the lab that fishes and would donate some fish.

10/26
So...its been a while, but that doesn't mean i haven't been doing anything. However, it does mean that I haven't been doing enough. The reason for this lapse in posting is due to me getting sick. Then there was a surge in homework and tests because the end of the quarter was near; teachers wanted grades in their gradebook. On top all of this extra work, I am in stage crew. This last week was production week. This means that for the past two weeks i have been at st joe from 8-3 for school then from 3:30-9 i had crew to either set up the set or do various other jobs during the show. Typically i would get home around 9:30. I would then have to eat dinner and do homework. Now you might be thinking that I have a study hall for Science Research. The answer is yes, but not for science research because I do not have access to computer, which a computer is essential for me to do anything for science research. I cannot go to the library either because of rules at st joe. I need a pass from my teacher to leave my study hall to go to the library. It is unfortunately difficult to do this because of how this class works...

10/27
I have a meeting with Ed on Wednesday. I plan to look at the data and the momentum going in my project again. I also have some fresh fish waiting for me. I would like to get the fish started in the drying process.

10/29
I had my meeting with Ed on wednesday. I looked the data with Ed and put it on my flash drive. I put the data into excel because i dont have the fancy programs notre dame has to look at the data. I'll have to figure out how to manage it with excel. I also collected the fish: it is a blue gill from a lake in Michigan. I also bought some fresh salmon from Martin's today.

11/4
Today I had a brief meeting with Ed, but then Ed had other business and meetings to attend to. So we did not have too much time. We discussed minor details involving the my project, how to handle the data, and possibilities of where my project might be heading. Ed said sometimes you have to let the data decide where your project is going to go. I was seemingly unsuccessful in finding mercury in the first sample, so i might have to slightly change the focus of the project. I picked up my fish from Ed. I also met with Mike over at the natural science building to give him the fish so it could be ashed.

11/6
I talked to Mike. I told him about my lack in finding mercury. It probably wasnt the best sample to find mercury because it was only the fillet and it was from Martain's, a supermarket that hopefully wouldn't sell contaminated fish. Mike explained that if the fish were to absorb any contaminates it most likely would not be in the muscle of the fish. The contaminates are more likely to find their way into the liver, because the liver's job is to filter the body, or the fat, because the body stores stuff that it does not know what to do with in the fat. Mike recommendation was to look at a whole fish or maybe even just a liver. How convenient, my 2nd fish that I have collected is a whole blue gill fish.

11/11
Today I met with Ed. Ed was storing my Blue Gill for me at the lab. I discussed minor details and updates on my project with him. I then met with Mike. I gave the blue gill fish to Mike so he could ash the fish. We decided that since just ashing the fish worked fine, thats how we'd do it everytime and skip the drying process. The fish should be ready by next week.

11/13
Due to computer problems at home, today I decided to skip my study hall and go to the library to hopefully use a computer in there. I got on a computer and tried to get that school technology to work for me but it was not much more helpful than my crashed computer. GN told me it was not going to work but I wanted to try for myself. There is internet connected to the computers but there is also a security system that blocks almost everything. The first hurdle was to just have the security system accept the wikispace website. Which it eventually did, but once I was on there it would not let me edit anything. I kept trying for the whole hour of the study hall. After accidentally deleted content multiple times and having to restore it I had to stop because I had to go to my next class.

11/18
I briefly met with Ed first to discuss things. I then headed over to the natural science building to meet with Mike. Fish number 2 was done being ashed today. I picked it up. There was a mishap with the fish though. During the ashing, the glass container shattered. The fish was ashed but I had to collect the ash from the bowels of the oven. A small amount of ash was lost in the process. There will be a little bit of error in the ratio of fish before ashing to fish after the ashing. My theory of why this incident of the glass shattering happened is because I pulled the blue gill from the freezer and headed straight to the natural science building. I assume the fish must have been still partly frozen when I got there. So when I put the fish into the jar, it cooled the jar down. Then I put the jar in the oven and started the oven. The heat difference from the cooled jar to the heating oven was too great that the jar shattered. I brought the small tin pan filled with the ashed fish back to Ed. When I got there I ground the ash into a fine powder because there were chunks and then transfered the ash from the tin pan to another glass jar. I did this so it was easier to manage. I will make sure to have time to defrost the fish to be ashed in the future. I would rather not have to deal with this problem again.

11/20
It has occurred to me after looking back on previous logbook posts that I did have another fish. It never did end up getting ashed. I think someone ate it and thats why I forgot about it. I recently watched the first half of the movie called "[|Food inc.] " This was the movie that inspired the current project I am working on. Description: This film is a Documentary by Robert Kenner. In it he exposes the corrupt, highly processed American food industry. Summary: Most people would be shocked with what the food industry actually is. People are fed the image of the farmer and made to believe that the traditional idea of a farmer is where their food, whether it be meat, fruits, or vegetables, comes from. This is not so; the food we see comes in our supermarkets comes from factory. The food industry uses a much more "modern" methods with growing their foods and putting it on shelves in those stores. The methods tend to be an assembly line idea. These modern methods are not at all better for us. These methods were designed by the major corporations that own the food industry. The food industry is no longer controlled by the many farmers who would grow the food but the industry is controlled by just a few mega food corporations. Take the meat industry for example. There are companies like Tyson Foods Inc. who process a huge majority of all meat in American. The only competition to these companies are a few other major food corporations. In the American capitalist society, profit is encouraged. That profit is all these corporations want to point where they do not care what they are selling the American people...this summary will be continued on later posts...

11/25
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. On top of other people not being available, I am also leaving town for the holidays. I am leaving today; I was not able to meet with any one today. On top of the fact that the family computer has crashed, I will be without any type of computer access for this holiday because I am going to my grandparents house. They live on a farm and I am lucky that they even have decided to get cellphones. I am not even sure if they know what internet is.

12/3
I have set my new home laptop up at home and have also connected it to internet. Well, by new I actually mean the same old laptop just with a new hard drive. The status report is that the hard drive is what crashed on the computer. What this means is that everything on the computer is gone. EVERYTHING. All of my school work and college essays are gone. Even my science research data, problems, and papers I was reading are gone. Fortunate enough I have my wikispace which atleast has the raw data from my PIXE runs. So, those still exist.

12/8
Today I made a first draft for my milestone map. I'm sure it will change a lot by the final product. Dr. L, could you give me feedback on my outline and give any suggestions.

12/9
Today I met with Ed over in the lab. I was over there for the afternoon. We talked about my grade. He says he is going to try to help me with that in various ways. He also tried to schedule time to do some runs with PIXE, but it is completely booked until February. I figure I'll keep ashing fish and then run them with PIXE all at once. What I am going to do for this semester is run some tests using XRF on the fish. XRF stands for X-Ray Florescence and it uses an almost identical theory to that of PIXE. I will be able to get similar results from XRF to that of PIXE. The reasons PIXE is assumed to be a better alternative is that XRF is more susceptible to noise radiation and PIXE is much more precise and sensitive. The XRF should be more accessible, so I will be able to get a couple tests next week. Also, on a different note, I made a page called "fall milestone map." Im not sure what I was thinking with the "spring map." I must be already wanting it to be spring.

12/16
I was planning on meeting with Ed over at the modern physics lab in Jordan, but that never happened. I have found out today that Dr. Lamm has passed away last friday ive been told because of cancer. Dr. Lamm was the Technical Director for the PIXE labs. He was a coworker and a friend of my mentor. His funeral was scheduled for today at 3:30. That is why my meeting with Ed has been rescheduled for Friday at 3:30.

12/18
Today, after my finals were over, I went over to campus to Jordan hall to meet with Ed. We talked about the project and my milestone map. I also set up the XRF lab and did some runs on both fish #1 and #2. I took some samples of copper, silver, and titanium and tested them too so that I would be able to calibrate the data correctly. The detector gives data back according to channel numbers, but thats no help to me. I ran the other elements because I know what energy they give off and they are pure metals. I get atleast two different metals with different energys and match those to the channel number given. I can then know how to scale the actual data in relation to those know metals. I would then know what the channel numbers on the actual data match up to.

1/19
I have looked into the other projects. I dont feel that changing my project would help me. It would be unrealistic to change project at this point in the year since its only a semester left and I will not be able to keep this project due to the fact that I will be graduating at the end of this school year. I believe my best option is to stick with my PIXE project for the semester. Dr L, if you strongly oppose that let me know. I could try to make something else work. What I would be able to do is maybe modify my experiment some how.

1/23
On wednesday I went over to campus for a couple meetings. I met with a man by the name of Patrick. He is in charge of the energy center on campus. Part of our discussion involved me explaining my project. I was wondering if he had any advice or if I could in any way involve him in my project. He said his department was strictly energy related issues and since I already have a project started and direction I am going in that there's not much he could do. My project is more of an environmental issue. He did say the one thing he could think of is that I could look at the fish down stream from some of the near by factories and powerplants. He said Indiana has a couple of the dirtiest and most polluting plants in the country. After talking to Patrick, I went to meet with Ed. We discussed the project and I gave him some forms to look through for the science fair.

1/26
I met with Mike this week. He is actually off work for the next couple weeks, so it will be hard to get into the lab to do work there. I will have to email Mike again to see when I can get in. Mike did have good news for me when I talked to him. He had a big male salmon for me. he said he had collected it for me while he was in Chicago in an area that is more polluted than others. I might be able to find something interesting in this fish. Since it was a big fish, we discussed how I would handle it. I figured this might be my chance to do some kind of grid cut on the fish. I also might want to think about running a wet sample, one that has not been ashed, because I have heard from several sources that the mercury might be evaporating out of the fish before I am using PIXE on it.

2/7
Last wednesday i went into the lab. I went to the biology lab to check out my new fish mike had for me. It was a little more difficult than i thought it would be to find every thing because eventhough i had scheduled this meeting with mike, he just couldnt stay to help me. He had been in the lab earlier but ended up feeling sick and going home. I had to find everything myself which made it take longer. There was another man in the lab i met. His name was dave and he was able to help me out. The fish was frozen in the freezer. In many ways that was good because the fish was preserved and i didnt have to deal with it bleeding everywhere. It also made it harder because I wanted to cut the fish up. I used a small saw but it was like cutting through a rock that you could not hold on to. It was very difficult to get the one slice i got. I plan to cut the fish into maybe 6 slices to be ashed. I cut the first slice and put it seperate so it does not get ashed. I want to test that fish without ashing it.

2/9
I figured I would elaborate first on how I worked on the fish last wednesday. I had already mentioned how after the fish was given to me I stuck it in the freezer in the biology building. That kept it preserved until I came back to work on it. When I did come back to work on it, I pulled it out and brought it back to the lab with me. I laid some black plastic bags on the lab work bench to catch whatever miscellaneous debris came off of the fish. I put on a lab coat and some gloves. I then found a saw to use to cut up the fish. I used one hand to hold on to the fish by the tail and the other to use the saw. After a little while the fish started to get slippery as the ice melted and it began to get much harder to saw. I am not sure if there is a better way to do this, an easier way. After getting one slice out of the fish, I had to clean up.

2/11
I went to run some tests on that slice of fish I had cut. I took that slice out of the freezer again and took it with me to the XRF lab. My idea was that I wanted to test a sample of fish that had not been ashed. I had been told several times that the type of mercury that is in fish is called methyl mercury. that is the type that is usually what is inside of animals. I decided to look into and sure enough wikipedia agreed with them. The people that told me this did have degrees in the field, so I was not too surprised that they were right. The other bit of information they told me was that the type of mercury I was dealing with, methyl mercury, would volatilize when exposed to intense heat. The ashing process definitely involves some intense heat. My idea was to run this non-ashed sample to see if i could find any mercury since I hadnt seen any yet in the ashed samples. I took the fish to the lab. I used some foil to create some temporary bowls for the fish. I put the still frozen fish into the bowls and then set them under the detector. I then turned XRF on. It collected data.

2/13
I looked at the data collected from XRF. Most of the data was typical. There was one peak that i saw in particular that I found very odd and surprised me. I calculated the energy which was close to 19.2 which is the energy that corresponds to the element Ruthenium. At first I thought it might have also been Technetium. After some looking into it, I found that Technetium is the only naturally occurring element that has no stable isotope. the more likely case was that it is Ruthenium. Im not sure why there is Ruthenium and Ive never really heard of Ruthenium before.

2/17
I went into the lab today. I met with both Ed and Mike. First of all, I had Ed sign some last second forms for me for the science fair. we got that all squared away so that I did not need to worry about forms anymore. I also got advice from both Ed and Mike on how to make my poster and how to present my project. They helped me get the ball rolling. Mike let me look at a poster he had made to see what the layout of a poster looked like. He also gave me advice on how an abstract is written.

2/20
It was obviously odd to see Ruthenium in my fish that i had sampled. Usually when you think of fish you think of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, but not ruthenium. I did some research on Ruthenium. Nothing I read said anything about ruthenium being in fish. It mentioned that it can be used in factory setting for electro plating. It is also pollution from factories and mining. It could have been pollution that got into the water and that was how the fish acquired the ruthenium. There was a surprising fact that I learned about Ruthenium. It was that whoever is reading this post, most likely dr. L, I bet you have some ruthenium right next to you, or atleast close by. Ruthenium is what the metal ball of ball point pens are made up of. I was able to briefly test this last week with XRF. I put a ball point pen underneath and sure enough, along with all the other peaks, there was a small ruthenium peak.

2/26
This last week has been heavily involved in working on my presentation for the science fair. I have made a poster board, and written both an abstract and a research plan for the science fair. I have been preparing what I will say because a huge portion of the fair is to articulate and present your project to the judges. You could have an amazing project and a great poster, but if you can not articulate and do not understand what is going on with your project then your poster does not mean much. You have to present the whole package to do well. I have made my poster from a trifold board and i have been working primarily with powerpoint to make a presentation.

3/2
Last saturday I presented at the region science fair. For the most part it went well. We, meaning the science research class, were at the fair from early morning until mid-afternoon. It was like another whole school day, except on a Saturday. I got there early that morning so I could set my poster board up and put my papers on display. Pretty soon after, the science fair started. It seemed like judge after judge came to talk to me about my poster. Im not sure all of them really graded my poster though, but i treated it all the same. Someone would walk up and shake my hand and introduce themselves. that was my queue to start my presentation. Each person was a little different. Some just listened and others only asked questions. Others listens and asked a few questions. That happy medium person was my favorite to talk to. One of the people i believe was just there to make sure i followed the rules. I thought this because of the specific questions he asked. Overall, everyone thought my project was very interesting. The one suggestion i got was to get more numbers. One guy wanted more numerical data. But other than that, i got compliment after compliment. They liked where my project was heading too and thought i had a great start. For my presentation, i would talk about it in the most logical order i could. I made this easy on myself by displaying on my board in the most logical order. I will post my poster in a powerpoint form below. In the end, I received a second place award for my presentation.

media type="custom" key="5742915"

3/7
I have been working on cutting more sections of that big salmon with Mike. It is a difficult task. I have to try to cut the fish as fast as I can because it is defrosting. When the fish starts to defrost, it makes everything much messier. The fish also becomes much slicker and harder to hold on to. This means I have to be even more careful not to cut myself. I have now cut several cross sections of the fish. I plan to make some kind of histogram after all the cross sections are analyzed. This week is a busy week for me. I have my performance for the musical all this week, so much of my time, excuse me, all my time will be spent on preparing for the performance. They dont even give us time to do our homework. I will be at practice til atleast 9:30 every night and then who knows when Ill get out on performance nights. Hope it goes well. **
 * 3/10

3/17-present
I have fallen ill recently, and hopefully will get better sometime soon. I havent been able to go to school or really function in general for over a week a now. Im not extremely behind in everything possible. I got mono a couple weeks ago and it got really bad. And the stress from everything i was involved in made it much worse. I will hopefully be into the swing of things soon, but if im not careful, mono could take a while to get over.

4/2
Today is the first day of spring break.

4/8
I met with both Ed and Mike today. Mike notified me about a problem with the ashing over that they are currently working on to fix. There is a contamination problem that wouldnt effect me, but it affects other who use the oven. Mike said id be able to use it again soon. Ed said that there is now a class that uses the accelerator most days. He did say that there would still probably openings for when i can use the pixe accelerator.

4/12
today was my first full day back to school. Im still massively behind in every class and on top of that, Im not quite over mono. I still feel sick all the time. I really shouldnt be in school, but i have to if I want a chance at graduating. Ive missed so much school, even with Spring Break, that I cant miss any more.

4/26
I have uploaded a starting form of a powerpoint for the final voice thread project. It is a work in progress.

4/28
I successfully logged into voice thread today, but after that I had troubles. Im not really sure how to work it. I thought I uploaded a powerpoint but i can seem to edit the voice thread or look at the powerpoint. It appears blank.

4/30
Today I took a second look at voicethread. I logged in and then I tried reloading my powerpoint up. It seems to have worked this time. Im not sure why I had troubles with it. I looked through voice thread. I still plan on going through the powerpoint, you had said that for one thing there is too many words on the slides. I did notice that on some of the slides not all the words and pictures fit on the voicethread screen so i assume that means I need to change that so it does fit. I also posted some of the data files on my online logbook just so they were there. I have been struggling with trying to put them in a graphical form. Excel has not been working for me. I tried to use microsoft works spreadsheet but that could not graph the data. I first had to convert the file format because as you might notice it is a .TAK which is kind of a unique extension. I used notepad because that seemed to be the only program that could open it. I thought that was slightly amusing. I used to notepad to save the file as a txt file. I could then use the files with other programs. Since microsoft works did not work I looked to the internet but with not much luck. I searched for many variations of "graph" or "online spreadsheet." nothing helpful popped up. I turned to google docs which i used to look at the data and to make a graph. the graph looked ok but did not have an x axis and i couldnt figure out how to create one. And because of this I cant tell the energy level of the different bars so it is not helpful at all.

5/9
I had come to a road block on my computer recently. I had been using some trial versions of microsoft office. I had gone on using the version of microsoft office without paying any attention to how long they would last. The programs ended up expiring when I needed to use them most. I was not able to look at my data or create the graphs to analyze that I wanted to. As I have said I tried to find alternatives. I spent hours exploring and trying new online sources and programs. None that I found were helpful to any degree. The only option was to use microsoft office like I had been earlier. I had my dad buy microsoft office for me, but it took a few days to get things worked out with the software are everything worked out. I now have a working complete version of microsoft office on my computer. I can work with both my data and the powerpoints now. I plan to get working again on the powerpoint because I need to finish my final soon.

5/14
Today updated my final project. I was able to insert slides into the powerpoint. it still has work to go. It still needs to be visually fixed because for some reason the size of the powerpoint doesnt transfer over to the voice thread. Dr. L, if you have an easy fix for this that would be nice otherwise ill have to go back and rearrange the original powerpoint. After my work today, i uploaded to voice thread again. then deleted the old powerpoint. im not sure if this is the easiest to go about this either. then after that uploaded i also figured out how to embed into the wikispace so now theres a powerpoint there.