Paris Life Update # 12

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Scanning Electron Microscope Results

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 It was really cool to work with the Scanning Electron Microscope! Our goal was to match results from the SEM to the polograms I've been creating. When I prepared the samples, I marked the region of interest on the bottom of the slide, so I wouldn't mess anything up on the sample itself. But that meant we couldn't find the spot once the slide was in the SEM! We took it out, and added tape to guide us to the correct place, but once I took the tape back to the dark field optical microscope, the tape's signal overpowered everything else. If I could do it again, I would use the marker on the surface of the slide with the nanorods to avoid the whole problem, but even with all of the hiccups, I learned a ton!  Here are some of the SEM images!!  
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Prep. for Scanning Electron Microscope

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Tomorrow is the ultimate test of everything I've done so far! I've been trying to figure out the orientation of nanorods with polarized light, but until now I haven't had an answer key to compare my results with. The nanorods are too small to determine how they are oriented with visible light, so we have to turn to something with an even smaller wavelength. That's where the scanning electron microscope comes in! Since electrons have a much smaller wavelength than visible light, we can create a topographical map of my sample. If the polarization method I've been working on matches the map, we win!  To get ready, I prepared more nanorod samples on special, conductive slides. Today I took them into the lab and compared them with the regular glass slides to see if the nanorods were deposited correctly. That's where it got complicated. The conductive slides are much thicker than the glass slides and were impossible to view with the 40x objective we were using. The sl...
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Paris Life Update #1

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I haven’t done any crazy science yet - this week was all paperwork and travel. Here’s the week in 5 snapshots! I picked up a kids toy when he dropped it in on the metro and he said “merci.” It was adorable. And my only successful interaction in French so far I ate the prettiest gelato ever - they make little flowers with gelato here. I keep stumbling into historic monuments on accident. It’s fun to live in such and old place! Another student in my group taught me how to Ollie on her skateboard (I’m as surprised as you are) I’m on floor 7 in our building a cité universitaire … and our elevator is broken. I’ll be ready for a marathon of stairs by the time I’m finished here
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