[88-89; 128-134] In addition to coursework, I am an undergraduate researcher working with a professor who studies Nano-materials. The Professor is like my boss, I guess. He’s a dude who runs the whole lab, and he tells us like, hey, we’re going to work on this project, or we’re going to work on that project. But he was one of the people who went up to the national lab to do the measurements. In general, he’s the one that knows most of what he’s doing at the lab, because he’s actually a doctor. He’s actually got a doctorate. So yeah, he knows a bunch of stuff about magnetism and Nano-materials.
[96-103; 112-125] When I first started on the project, I read textbooks to try and understand what magnetism is and stuff, but since then, I’ve been working in the lab more, because the professor let me know that I understood the material good enough. Most of my role as a research assistant involves running simulations on my computer, just part of why getting a new computer was really great. Lately, I’ve been using a program called Riffle 1D that takes reflectometry data. We’re doing neutron scattering, so we’re bouncing a neutron off of a sample, and then seeing what it looks like on the other side. And that’ll get measurements from the depth of it and how far apart the things are on the sample. So, once we get the data from the reflectometry, we put it into Riffle 1D, and then we have a code that says which things will have a layer of silicon and then a layer of gadolinium and a layer of other elements. And eventually we’ll it with air at the very end. Riffle 1D does is it changes the parameters for the thing, so we’ll be like, hey, we think the silicon is an instrum tall. And then Riffle 1D will be like, hey, to make it match the reflectometry data, the silicon got to be like two instrums tall. But if what we put in originally doesn’t work with the data at all, I go through and I change it to try and see if I can get it to work at all. Yeah.
[431-433; 435-439] This research opportunity led to me receiving an internship offer to work at the national lab. The professor I work with in the lab mentioned how there was an internship at the national lab we collaborate with, the place he did the measurements, for experiments. He encouraged me to apply for the internship. I said, okay, I’ll do that. And so, I applied for it. And I got the job, the internship, the job, I’m going to be working on the same project that I’m doing here. So, I’m going to be doing it at the National lab, so I’ll be able to do some actual measurements, and not just do stuff on the computer.