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April 15th, 2009

Brommie Goes to the Beach!

4/15/09 10:58 pm
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Yesterday I had a day off, so what better to do than take my shiny new bike on the beach? Well, take the shiny new bike on the beach, go to the bike shop and buy cool accessories for said shiny bike, and then take lots of pics of the new shiny bike on the beach!

From Brommie at the Beach


( More pics under cut! )
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March 8th, 2009

Teh Kitteh is Photogenic!

3/8/09 11:36 pm
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I haven't posted pics of teh kitteh in a while, so here's some. There is an informal photo contest on one of the forums I frequent, and this month's theme was "circles." I thought I'd try my hand at it with teh kitteh, as he was being cooperative and jumping on or sitting next to circular objects. First photo is the actual entry, and the rest are the ones that I considered.



( Moar pics under cut )

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In other news, the WDCH Youth Orchestra Festival was great. Well, the parts of it I saw, anyway. I was only there for the first two (Pasadena and CSUN), and I must say, CSUN's performance blew me away. I enjoyed their rendition of Dvorak's  Slavonic Dances #2 and 3 and Mascagni's Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, but what got me was their really, really moving rendition of the Infernal Dance and Finale from Stravinsky's Firebird that brought the audience to a standing ovation. *fans self* Their Bernstein Overture to Candide was a bit dirty--quite understandable, as it's a hard piece--and I would've loved to compare their performance of it to Claremont's rendition, but...no. Teh bf and I had errands to run at the central library that took waaaay too long, so we missed Olympia and Claremont. Oh well. I see the folks at Claremont all the time anyway, but I would've loved to see Olympia in concert.

I was gonna post a Weekend Opera report on Das Rheingold, but I am waaaaaay too busy, what with finals coming up and all. I shall post it after finals!!
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I feel this way about my experiments too.

3/8/09 10:56 pm
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Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass

Abstract: The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie. My careful theoretical modeling and painstaking experimentation reveal 1) that my equipment is crap, as are all the available texts on the subject and 2) that this whole exercise was a complete waste of my time.

Introduction

Electrons in germanium are confined to well-defined energy bands that are separated by "forbidden regions" of zero charge-carrier density. You can read about it yourself if you want to, although I don't recommend it. You'll have to wade through an obtuse, convoluted discussion about considering an arbitrary number of non-coupled harmonic-oscillator potentials and taking limits and so on. The upshot is that if you heat up a sample of germanium, electrons will jump from a non-conductive energy band to a conductive one, thereby creating a measurable change in resistivity. This relation between temperature and resistivity can be shown to be exponential in certain temperature regimes by waving your hands and chanting "to first order".

Experiment procedure

I sifted through the box of germanium crystals and chose the one that appeared to be the least cracked. Then I soldered wires onto the crystal in the spots shown in figure 2b of Lab Handout 32. Do you have any idea how hard it is to solder wires to germanium? I'll tell you: real goddamn hard. The solder simply won't stick, and you can forget about getting any of the grad students in the solid state labs to help you out.
Once the wires were in place, I attached them as appropriate to the second-rate equipment I scavenged from the back of the lab, none of which worked properly. I soon wised up and swiped replacements from the well-stocked research labs. This is how they treat undergrads around here: they give you broken tools and then don't understand why you don't get any results.

Fig. 1:


Check this **** out.
In order to control the temperature of the germanium, I attached the crystal to a copper rod, the upper end of which was attached to a heating coil and the lower end of which was dipped in a thermos of liquid nitrogen. Midway through the project, the thermos began leaking. That's right: I pay a cool ten grand a quarter to come here, and yet they can't spare the five bucks to ensure that I have a working thermos.

Results

Check this **** out (Fig. 1). That's bonafide, 100%-real data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with nothing but the best data possible. Now, let's look a bit more closely at this data, remembering that it is absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential dependence? I sure don't. I see a bunch of crap.

Christ, this was such a waste of my time.

Banking on my hopes that whoever grades this will just look at the pictures, I drew an exponential through my noise. I believe the apparent legitimacy is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered.

Conclusion

Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should've declared CS. I still wouldn't have any women, but at least I'd be rolling in cash.
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March 5th, 2009

I Have a New Haircut and Color!!!!

3/5/09 11:01 am
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And I totally, totally love it.

Photobucket

That's all.


P.S. [info]farewell_mask, you're going to the Youth Orchestra Festival on Sunday, right? See you there!
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March 1st, 2009

Few-body Systems!!!

3/1/09 11:05 am
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It's a facebook meme, but I'm gonna do it on LJ just because. :D


CREATE YOUR BAND NAME & ALBUM COVER:

To Do This

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" or "comment" and TAG the friends you want to join in.


Photobucket

I find my album very amusing...oh yes.
  • Current Mood: amused
  • Tags:
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