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Failure, failure, degradation!
Jul. 29th, 2004 07:16 pmSerious problems, some experimental, and others instrumental, appear to have arisen in my REU research this summer. Between our laser woes, newly discovered (this afternoon) problems with Langmuir probe data, and our deciding not to set up a certain trigger system, the experiment may have to be repeated.
Only problem is I'm flying home Saturday. So I wouldn't be there for a rerun if it became necessary. Which bothers me; if this were my thesis work at Swat, for instance (and I could perhaps see someone writing a very short thesis out of this), I could repeat the experiment no problem.
My PI assured me that whatever happened, I'd still get co-authorship on the paper. But that's not what concerns me; I don't do physics for the prestige. I just wish this had worked out as we wished.
One does, in life, learn as much from the failures as the successes. Regardless of what happened, I feel like I did learn a ton this summer about doing physics. Watching my PI as we tried to wade through some of the problems (which I had not even realized were so serious) was eye-opening. He was not really in a foul temper, as I feared, but more like "okay, let's solve this." The meticulousness with which he made every measurement that had to be made is something I should learn to emulate. He has many good qualities, much as I have been privately critical of him and intimidated by him. I will try to take what is good in his personality and avoid what is not. One can be a meticulous, even anal (in a good sense) experimenter, while still being friendly, modest, and respectful of everyone, from subordinates to other faculty.
Enough. I need to go to dinner and then tweak my talk for tomorrow, and rehearse it. Because of my PI, I've missed lunch and dinner at Burge, an added expense to me (though it's not like the food there is great).
Anyone see Amy Bug's first P111 assignment? She's assigned sixteen problems for the first seminar! And I thought she was supposed to be one of the easier of the physics profs... okay I shouldn't complain, we have from now until September and some of them are trivial (ie, take grad of potential energy to calculate the force).
Only problem is I'm flying home Saturday. So I wouldn't be there for a rerun if it became necessary. Which bothers me; if this were my thesis work at Swat, for instance (and I could perhaps see someone writing a very short thesis out of this), I could repeat the experiment no problem.
My PI assured me that whatever happened, I'd still get co-authorship on the paper. But that's not what concerns me; I don't do physics for the prestige. I just wish this had worked out as we wished.
One does, in life, learn as much from the failures as the successes. Regardless of what happened, I feel like I did learn a ton this summer about doing physics. Watching my PI as we tried to wade through some of the problems (which I had not even realized were so serious) was eye-opening. He was not really in a foul temper, as I feared, but more like "okay, let's solve this." The meticulousness with which he made every measurement that had to be made is something I should learn to emulate. He has many good qualities, much as I have been privately critical of him and intimidated by him. I will try to take what is good in his personality and avoid what is not. One can be a meticulous, even anal (in a good sense) experimenter, while still being friendly, modest, and respectful of everyone, from subordinates to other faculty.
Enough. I need to go to dinner and then tweak my talk for tomorrow, and rehearse it. Because of my PI, I've missed lunch and dinner at Burge, an added expense to me (though it's not like the food there is great).
Anyone see Amy Bug's first P111 assignment? She's assigned sixteen problems for the first seminar! And I thought she was supposed to be one of the easier of the physics profs... okay I shouldn't complain, we have from now until September and some of them are trivial (ie, take grad of potential energy to calculate the force).
