Stuff I Did This Summer

Or: The Effect of Spherical Confinement on a Monodisperse Colloidal Suspension using Brownian Dynamics Simulation

Or: Everything I Never Wanted to Learn About Diffusion

After it was all said and done, I was left with some graphs, several gigabytes of free software on my computer, and approximately ten million data points. I’m actually not even exaggerating. The program I worked with kept track of the positions of hundreds to thousands of particles for several hundred time steps, and that’s a lot of data.

How I ended up doing research is yet another of my “Well, it’s kind of a funny story” stories. I met with one of my professors to talk about working on the project I had worked on the past summer. She said, sure, I could work on it, but how about research? It would involve coding in Fortran. I hadn’t programmed anything since my freshman year Intro to MATLAB class and told the professor so. No problem, she said, you’ll be fine.

Okay, then. After talking to the grad student I’d be working with, I decided to do research over the summer, because why not? And that’s how I ended up reading research papers about exciting topics such as long-time self-diffusion and modeling hydrodynamic interactions while coding in Fortran to confine imaginary spherical particles in a larger imaginary spherical cavity. When I told my dad I was working in Fortran, he asked if people were still coding things in Fortran. Apparently so.

My job over the summer was to modify existing Brownian dynamics code to simulate particles enclosed in a sphere. By tracking their positions and collisions, you can do magic math to determine properties of the fluid. I also got to edit Python code (another language I had never seen before in my life), and do post-processing on my millions of data points.

All of this mostly took place in Olin, making it two consecutive years of not being out of Olin for longer than two weeks, discounting winter break. I was jammed into a corner of the group office with two grad students, but I had my own desk and I could see out of a window, which instantly elevated the space over the senior/undergrad lounges. Actually, lounge is a bit of a misnomer, because there’s very little lounging done in the lounge. A lot of last-minute-deadline-meeting, procrastinating, complaining, some sleeping and eating, but not much on the relaxation front. Which makes it the natural place for many of the seniors to congregate during their final year. #FunInTheSunDingyGreyBasement #ChemELife

Anyway, in the end, when summer was over, I learned some stuff about colloids and computational microrheology. I had fun, because I’m a nerd like that.

The No-Longer-Hypothetical List of Exciting Things That Have Happened to me at Cornell, Fall 2015 edition

I spent most of the semester running between the band room, the rock wall, the lab, and the basement of Olin. Even amidst the craziness, I managed to have some exciting times.

1. Wedding – I attended my first wedding. Well, kind of. I stood outside Sage Chapel with the pep band until the wedding ceremony was over and after that we played a couple of sets. Besides the Alma Mater, they also requested “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 and the theme from the Muppets. Not exactly wedding fare, but then again, I’ve never been to a wedding before.

2. Happy hour – Before Thanksgiving break, most of my lab group plus another friend and I decided that after the ChemE semester we’d been having, we needed to go to happy hour. For four dollars each, we got a half price pitcher of beer and an order of fries. We ate, we drank, and we talked about ChemE, because what else do we have to talk about? Okay, we also talked about other things. Like grad school.

3. Climbing – For my PE class, I took performance rock climbing (p-rock). Somehow, over the course of the semester, I found myself able to actually climb routes at Liindseth. And not just routes, but routes that weren’t the absolute easiest routes that I could find. Routes that other competent looking climbers worked on and sometimes struggled with. In other words, I was not the worst climber at Lindseth anymore. I also got to put up my own bouldering route.

4. Continuous distillation – After learning about distillation columns for three years, we finally got to run one, in our very own unit operations laboratory. It was a bit of a race to see whether we’d reach the distillation column lab first or if the construction crew would have the column reconstructed, but in the end the column was put back together in time (if just barely) for us to do the lab. ChemE lab may not be about mixing chemicals or building circuits, but after you do data analysis and find that it matches up – usually not perfectly, but sometimes really well – with what you expect, that’s still pretty cool.

5. ChemE holiday party – And we ended the semester (almost; there were still a few finals after, but for all intents and purposes, we ended the semester) with the annual ChemE holiday party. We did not have the party in Olin, but in Statler, and there was lots of good food, skits and gifts, and alcohol before, during, and for some people, after dinner. It was a lot of fun, and directly after I had to finish up my grad school applications and study for my last final.

Semester in Review [Fall 2015]

After every semester, I finish my finals and think, “That was a crazy semester.” And then the next semester, it’s even worse. I don’t know how ChemE does it, but even when you have a deceptively easy course load of one lab class, two ChemE electives, and a PE class for fun, hypothetically you might still live in the Olin basement, never get to sleep, and miss more meals in a week than you usually miss in a semester. Hypothetical you might also fulfill the ChemE graduation requirement of eating a meal consisting entirely of items from the vending machine in the basement.

Real me took three classes, a PE class, TA’d for Intro to ChemE, started in a new research lab, and applied to grad schools. Real me might also have lived in the Olin basement, didn’t sleep, missed too many meals, and eaten a meal from the basement vending machine.

My main class was ChemE 4320: Chemical Engineering Laboratory, also known as UO Lab, which stands for Unit Operations Lab; this was our capstone lab class. Every week, we would go into the recently renovated, shiny new Unit Ops lab where we ran apparatuses ranging from the fluidized bed to the heat exchanger, and finally the distillation column. The thing about ChemE lab is that there’s not that much to physically observe. You turn valves and switches and things happen that you only know about if you have pressure gauges and thermocouples and rotameters to read. Still, with a lab report due every week drawing concepts from most of our previous ChemE classes, we learned a lot. I was our group’s data analysis person, and seeing how our collected data correlated with equations and concepts we’d learned in separations or heat and mass transfer really connected everything together. Our last lab report, on running the distillation column continuously, was the peak of the ChemE lab experience. We’d learned about distillation columns since the first semester of freshman year, and not only running the column, but getting it to work, was more than a little exciting.

I also took Bioprocess Engineering as an elective, and this class was my least favorite of the semester. I enrolled in the class because I don’t like straight up bio, but I don’t mind applying bio to engineering problems. We didn’t end up learning much in the class, never mind anything about engineering bioprocesses. The professor was often travelling, and when he was present, we were rarely taught 1) new material or 2) anything we needed to know for the homework. Which would have been okay if the textbook was a good resource, but our kinetics textbook, written by someone whose first language wasn’t English, was a better read. When the professor wasn’t in Ithaca, he often had guest lecturers, which was fine, but meant that we had very little continuity in the class. I need to know how things connect to really understand them, and I just couldn’t piece together a totally coherent story between lectures, guest lectures, the textbook, and the homework problems. On top of all that, we had a group project. Groups were a mixture of MEng/masters students and ChemE undergrads, and the difficulty of coordinating between the grads and undergrads led to fairly significant discrepancies in work distribution. Overall, this class was a disappointment since I took it because I was actually interested in the material.

My last main class was Microchemical and Microfluidic Systems. I took the class because I’d heard it was an easy elective. I ended up liking the material. It was a different perspective on ChemE, focusing a lot on manufacturing devices, especially in the first part of the course. Good elective, would recommend.

My PE class was (yet another) rock climbing class, this time Performance Rock Climbing. We climbed more advanced problems, and I was surprised to find that just by trying harder problems and climbing more, I got better at climbing. Another worthwhile class from COE.

If I had just had classes, I would have been fine. But I also TA’d, which was a very different experience from TA’ing fluids. And did research, which was also a good experience, one that will play a part in what I decide to do in grad school. And that’s it, another crazy semester for the books. Up next: Senior Design.

Lick Brook Falls (part 2)

[Part 1]

Standing next to the stream, we can’t tell how the other hikers made it across; there are a few rocks sticking up out of the water, but most are submerged under several inches of water – the very thing that has brought us to the falls (high water) is making it extra difficult to get to them. My hiking boots are waterproof, but only up to my laces. If the water’s higher than that, my feet will find themselves bathed in a swampy mixture of muddy water and sweat.

Eventually, we decide that the best way to cross the stream is to climb out onto a tree root that extends half a foot over the stream and leap to the bank on the other side. Yes, really. Once that’s accomplished, we (finally) find ourselves on the Lick Brook Falls trail. From there, it’s a leisurely stroll through sunlit forests as butterflies flutter through the flowers steep. Very steep. We pick our way up the incline and are rewarded by several waterfalls. The last part of the hike finally levels out a bit and we get to walk next to undeveloped gorge.

The Big One

At the end of the trail, we sign the trail register, letting future hikers know of our enviable pathfinding skills. Then we have to get back to Treman, so back down the slope we go. We each slip (no one falls) a couple times on the way down, and I can’t tell if it’s because of loose rock, decaying leaves, or just mud underfoot. Near the stream, we decide we have a little time to look for another waterfall, but don’t end up finding it. We see a snake near the Lick Brook Falls parking lot and my roommate stops to take pictures.

Smaller falls in the gorge

All of that becomes important, because back at Treman, I look at my watch. It’s getting very close to when the bus is supposed to pick us up, so we run back to the playground where the bus dropped us off. As we round the corner, we see the bus pull up to the stop. We start running faster. About thirty feet from the bus, we pause to get out our IDs to board. The bus pulls away from the stop.

My roommate and I look at each other. We contemplate calling someone to pick us up. We decide to walk the four miles to Wegmans, because after all, we still need groceries. Fortunately, route 13 has a nice wide shoulder, but it’s still not very pleasant, and we’re glad when we make it to the shopping area. Since we’re out there anyway, we stop by the Salvation Army store to see if they have any good jigsaw puzzles. We forget the Salvation Army store is closed on Sundays.

Continuing on our way to Wegmans, we pass an abandoned McDonald’s. It looks like something out of The Walking Dead. So does the railroad we passed earlier, actually. A little over an hour after being left by the bus at Treman, we walk into the Wegmans parking lot. The last bus from Wegman’s has left about ten minutes ago.

After our shopping is complete, we shoulder our bags for the next leg of our trip and walk to the Commons. We wait at the Green Street bus station for any buses heading to campus. I eat a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Finally, the 51 shows up. Its final destination is listed via Collegetown. When we make it back to Collegetown, I ask my roommate if she wants to take the stairs up to our apartment. She says no. We take the elevator and lie on the living room floor before peeling ourselves off to make dinner. Our other roommate later vacuums up the mud from the living room floor. I wouldn’t change a thing about our trip.

Lick Brook Falls (part 1)

This is a story that will be told out of order because if at all possible, it needs to be told in person. In the unlikely case that someone who needs to be told in person reads this blog, I waited to post about it. Here is the story, in its full glory, now.

If you’re like most students at Cornell who don’t have a car, you have one other thing in common: you have a TCAT fail story. One of the popular ones is taking the bus to Ithaca College instead of Cornell. Another is running up to the bus stop, making eye contact with the bus driver, and watching the bus pull away from the curb before your very eyes. Due to some stellar schedule reading, one of my friends got himself and a friend stuck at the mall one night. They had to call another friend to pick them up. A couple of my other friends ended up at the airport instead of the mall. They checked the schedule, figured out which bus they needed to take to get back en route, and waited. And waited, and waited. Finally, a bus pulled up. Wrong route number. The bus driver stopped and asked if they’d like to get on. They assured her that they’re waiting for another bus. The bus pulled away, and promptly changed its route number to the bus they’d been waiting for. They decided to walk (on the highway) to the mall. I contend that my (newest) story stands above the rest.

It starts on a Friday night in the apartment.

I’m in my room on the internet; from my desk I can see my roommate on her computer at the kitchen table. We’ve both been checking weather reports to decide what our adventure of the weekend is going to be. It’s going to rain all of Saturday, so we opt to go to the Museum of the Earth. Then my roommate mentions that the rain will clear up by Sunday. Lick Brook Falls is said to be best visited right after rain. Why don’t we go to Lick Brook on Sunday afternoon? Sure, I think. I’ve never been there before, and more waterfalls = more fun.

On Sunday, since we’ve spent Saturday at the Museum of the Earth and still need to get groceries for the upcoming week, we devise a bus schedule that will allow us to take the bus to Treman State Park, walk to and hike Lick Brook, catch the bus at Treman back to the Commons, walk from the Commons to Wegmans, and take the last bus from Wegmans back to Collegetown. A bit complicated, but doable.

No diving? . . . Aw . . .

The first part of the schedule goes according to plan and we take the 22 to Treman. We check out the falls by the swimming area, and water is thundering through. The swimming area is, understandably, closed. We sprint across the highway to walk over to the Lick Brook parking area and start the hike. The first part of the hike crosses a recently-flooded field and we follow a very muddy track. There’s one part where we cross a railway bridge, which is pretty cool.

How far to Terminus?

After the mud pits, we reach a wooded area and locate blazes going up a very steep hill. A couple of other hikers who look like they know what they’re doing are going in a different direction, but we decide to try the very steep hill. At the top, we can’t find any more blazes. Now we have to get down the very steep hill. Instead of falling hiking down the same way we came up, we bushwhack for awhile and make it back to the bottom, where we’re met by a stream. To be continued . . .