Week+of+Aug+24-27

Week of Aug 24-28 26th of August I went to the lab Wednesday and the scope was doing weird stuff. Every time I would try to approach it would crash. This had happened many times during the summer, but was usually able to be fixed by adjusting the gain. When I tried messing with the gain, nothing seemed to work. So I called Annette in for assistance and while she was able to get it to approach it was not getting an image and was the most drifty I have ever seen the scope (the z offset was 1 and it would be where you couldn't scan in less than a minute). When is was scanning also it would be going along perfectly fine and then all of a sudden the feedback would go crazy and the tip would crash unexpectedly. This didn't just happen once it happened multiple times. During my two and half hours or so at the lab I was only able to run scans 2 or 3 times and the tip was so poor these times that I was unable to get anything but a big blurry image. I probably changed tips 10 times during this span. Even when the piezo of the scope was broken I got better images. There was a 5 minute period of hope though when the scope seemed to be working right and I was scanning and was getting images (poor images), but the scope was drifting so much I had to constantly keep restarting the scan. In the middle of the most promising (and it wasn't a very promisiong scan) then the tip crashed. The feedback was perfect in the middle then it just crashed.

-In the past if the clips weren't touching the gold this was the reason it wouldn't approach, but this was not the reason this time.

28th of August I intended on coming in friday but was unable to because the lab was closed. This is a copy of the email from Becky:

Sean, I left you a voicemail, and I hope that you got it. I am cancelling todays afternoon of research. This morning there was a fire in the tunnel between the chemistry building and LaFortune. They had to shut down the ventilation system for the building, so we all left lab. The building smells like fire, and without ventilation we could smell all of the chemicals that we keep in lab. I hope you aren't too disappointed, I'll see you next Wednesday ! Becky

So I was unable to work in the lab because of this. Hopefully next time I am unable to do work in the lab I can try working with COMSOL, which I see Dr. L will be getting a trial copy of.


 * I even had my flash drive with me so I could download my scans to put on the wiki.** **I forgot to bring my lab book home to put stuff of the wiki on Wednesday, though.**

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