February+21-22

February 21st:

-Today I again scanned a layer of graphite on tape, not exposed to Polonium-210 -Becky gave me more of a window for results. Specifically, craters about half a micron across, which would support the idea of an alpha-particle impact -I'm still switching between scanning 10 micron and 5 micron (square) areas -Occasionally, some larger or smaller scans are also taken -There doesn't seem to be a great deal of interference, which makes sense due to the lack of exposure to a radioactive source -The little interference that does seem to be present is possibly due to my use of double-sided tape for these samples -I used double-sided tape because of the way the graphite layer was positioned on its holder and because I wanted to see that would happen to the scans, as using double-sided tape would be more efficient and practical for attaching the samples to the AFM



February 23rd:

I could not make it to the lab on Tuesday the 22nd, so I rescheduled with Becky to come in the following day, Wednesday the 23rd.

-I scanned the same piece of graphite on tape as yesterday -it was exposed from 1:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. today -There is some interference, again possible from my new use of double-sided tape -next week i will likely go back to using regular tape