Hi, I’m Logan, and I’m from Telluride, Colorado. Over the past month, I’ve been attending an internship in the chemistry department at the University of Houston.
This past week I finally got to do some more hands-on work regarding my project. The first thing I got to do this week was use the evaporator to make gold slides. The evaporator works by raising the vapor pressure in the chamber so that the material of choice may be evaporated. In our case, we evaporated gold onto several silicon slides that we will need for the project.
Evaporating Machine
Later on, in the week, I got to use the glass blowing torch in order to start learning how to fit different glass tubes and joints together. The torch uses both natural gas, and gaseous oxygen in order to create a flame that burns at around 2000° C, which is what is required to melt plexiglass. There is a steep learning curve for glass blowing so it requires a lot of practice to get right, but it is definitely my new favorite thing to do while I’m at the lab.
Glassblowing Torch
Over the next two weeks, I will finally get to collect my data and do a presentation for the group regarding my analysis. So far I am very happy with the vast amount of stuff I’ve been learning during this internship and I am so grateful to have this opportunity.
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