Week+of+7-2+to+7-6

7-2-12 I came in today and tested the sample holder with only one resistor on it and it still heated up very slowly. Matt suggested we try to use the sample holder with the voltage regulator from June 22. Matt and I walked down to the physics stockroom and got new banana clips. I stripped then soldered the ends of the wires to the banana clips. I plugged them in and placed a thermocouple on the surface. The temperature on this was supposedly 160* C. However, I sprayed water on the copper surface and it did not boil. Matt said that the faulty temperature reading was being caused by the thermocouple conducting electricity. He gave me some insulating material. I superglued it to the holder and then superglued the thermocouple to it. This was to prevent the electrical conductivitiy of the thermocouple. This new finding also debunks my heating data from June 22. The cooling data shoulod still be accurate though because I took that data while the system I was using was not running. I superglued the thermocouple to the platea\ and let it dry. After lunch I tested withe the thermomoeter and I think it was reading an accurate temperature. The negative side is that the thermal insulating plastic I glued the thermocouple to did a good job of preventing heat transfer. I took the temperature at the thermocouple every seconds for 60 sweconds while it heated then while it cooled. This set of data is incredibly strange. When the system turned off, the temperature increased. It should be cooling. I tried this multiple times and the temperature repeatedly increased.I chekeced the wiring inside and all of the wires were appropriately connected. It could have been that the resistor dissipated all of its heat after the current stopped running and only disippated a fraction of that while running. 7-3-12 I worked on the sample holder with the resistor again. On one of my attempts to find a resistance where the solder wouldn't melt, the tab of the resistor broke. I had to replace it with one from another sample holder since we had run out of them. The new resistor acted strangely and was reading 38.0 Ohms when it should have read 7.5 Ohms. I think I overheated it when I applied the electricity or my soldering job messed up the resistance. I tried running it anyway and then checked the resistance after it. It now read 130.0 Ohms. I was scanning with Jolae at the time and Matt was not there so I did not worry too much about it. I couldn't really do much since we were out of resistors. I ran it when it was around 130 Ohms for about a minute and checked the resistance after and it read 84.2 Ohms. I ran the system again for another minute and it read 91.3 Ohms afterwards. It was not connected to any electrical system at this time so I believe it was a fairly accurate reading. Since I was out of resistors, I tried using the sample holder with the voltage regulator again. It took about 20 seconds for it to boil water.I took one of the broken resistors and just reinserted the tab. It read 8.0 Ohms so I felt like it should have worked. I tried it and after it quickly melted the solder on the copper piece, I checked the resistance again and it was 102.7 Ohms. 7-5-12 I started the day by annealing a piece of gold. AFterwards I spent the entirety of the day scanning on Annette's old scope with Jolae to get practice for both her and me. 7-6-12 I re-annealed the piece of gold from yesterday. Prof. Kandel came in and discussed the plans for the project. He wants to place the resistor directly on top of the smaple. AFter talking with him, I went to scan again with Annette's scope. I was fairly certain that when I was taking out a tip, it broke off or I jammed it in further. I was able to get tips onto the end of the tip holder but I could never get them any further. I emailed Matt since he was working on a poster in the library. I came back from lunch and Matt confirmed that the scope was broken. I believe that this happened because I tried jamming the tips into the scope and I shattered the piezoelectric tube. It was that or when I shocked myself and had a knee-jerk reacction I could have shattered the piezoelectric piece. Matt had me test another voltage regulator that would be the same size as the new resistors coming in. I soldered wires to banana plugs and then to the regulator. I twisted the Neutral and Ground leads together on the regulator and connected a wire from them to the ground connector. I will do more tests with them on Monday while parts on the scope dry. Also, the new resistors should be in soon.