19 Jul Yakelin Ramos- Energy and Geoscience at U Utah, week 5

Hello all! I’m once here to report about what I’ve been doing this past week, and its been very interesting as I learned how to use a software named Profex. To begin my week, I came into the office as usual and began to look at data charts with samples of old mine waste from telluride too see what minerals the XRD machine was able to pick up. An XRD machine is officially called an X-ray diffractometer, an analytical instrument that uses X-ray beams to probe the atomic and molecular structure of crystalline materials to reveal details about phase composition and lattice spacing. These systems are generally categorized by sample type, such as powder X-ray diffractometers for bulk samples, or specialized thin-film and single-crystal models. I looked at these chart both Monday and Tuesday since Bry was out.

Here is the graph that shows the minerals that the XRD was able to find!

On Wednesday, Bry came back to the office and with her arrival she kindly taught me how to navigate Profex and look at the samples in further detail to see what else the software may detect. The results from using this software came up with various results. For starters there were some instances in where the software said that certain minerals were inside of the samples, but I was told by Bry to always ensure the results were authentic. For some of the minerals that would show up, I would conduct a check to see if there have ever been any record of that mineral present in the area and despite the software saying that it was 99% confident there wouldn’t be a registry of that mineral ever being in the area proving that the software has hallucinated.

A photo of when Bry took us to the Lab downstairs and before this photo she gave us in in depth explanation on the stories that rocks tell us by their shape and elements. It was interesting to hear about!

On Thursday I did much of the same thing, but I recived a text message from my host Father telling me that I could go in and check out a robot that he has been working on for the past two years. Naturally I came to see this robot as I have been told from my host Father that its follows the movements of the User’s arm.

Here I am using this control which allows me to move the robot as i would my arm/wrist!

The end of this week came quick and paired with this, came the realization that I just have a week left of my internship, and can’t belive that its felt so short yet it been more than a month! I hope that my last week here is eventful! I’ll see you guys next time on my last report!