Day 3 @ MSE, 5th June 2013

Today, we were not lost in ntu although it was still big and ULU=( As Minzhi was busy with SMO( Singapore Mathematical Olympiad o.o ) we carried out today's session without her=( 

 As usual, Wanru brought us to shadow her in her research work. After a while, we finally managed to have some hands-on work. Wanru let Yihong put the test tube into the centrifuge to separate the solid catalyst from the aqueous mixture.  

We saw the artificial light generating machine which is used to produce radicals to catalyse the reaction in the test tube. However, this time, we manage to take a closer look at it.

The red arrow is pointing at the filter which allows only infrared, visible light and UV light to pass through to mimic sunlight.

This process requires an estimated time of 4 hours or 14400 seconds.

There are three focus areas in this nanomaterial faculty namely: characterisation, production and appliction. The characterisation department focus on determining the properties of a nanomaterial before it is sent to the production department to see how the material can be produce at the lowest cost. Finally, the application department figures out how the material can be useful.

Today, we had the privilege to visit the characterisation department to see what it looks like.

We saw the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning it with a focused beam of electrons and it can achieve resolution better than 1 nanometer. ( 1 nanometer= 10^-9 meter ) This is how the nanomaterials which are too small too be seen by the naked eye are analysed and  characterise by the researchers. Wanru's colleague introduced to us how the SEM works briefly and it was really spectacular!!

Scanning Electron Microscope

We also saw a contraption used to coat platinum onto nanomaterials.

Pt coating machine

There is also a diffractometer which uses Xray to analyse the structure of the nanomaterial. The glass door has a special property that prevents x ray from seeping through which may otherwise increase the risk of the user developing cancer.

Diffractometer

Close up of the diffractometer

After that, we went to a new place to eat lunch! The food there smells so nice that it attracted houseflies! =( Guess we will stick to the previous foodcourt tomorrow... However, we met some of Wanru's friends who were quite friendly! They even treated us to watermelons!

Tidbit: After we finished eating our lunch, a cleaner cleared up our place quickly and exclaim that a colleague was new and slow in clearing up the tables. We were dumbfounded as there seems to be a competition between the cleaners. We deduced that this was so because they were encouraging students to clear up after themselves after their meal as part of the ongoing national graciousness campaign. So, to prevent cleaners from malingering, their wages depends on how much plates they have collected. ( This is only a conjecture.) 

Lastly, we went to the e-learning studio to complete our blog post of the day.

E-learning