(no subject)
May. 20th, 2005 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanfreepathI'm more or less settled into ML for the summer at this point. My basement room is a relatively small single, but it is not a bad room. This summer should be a good one.
I officially started research on Tuesday. For the most part I have been reading papers and old theses. I had a long discussion with the last student about his thesis, thus simultaneously helping him prepare for his defense and getting up to speed about some things I hadn't known about. I am going to work on the ion doppler spectrometer. The preliminary measurements made by the last student gave anomalously high temperatures (~200 eV) that plummeted right around the end of magnetic reconnection. The current hypothesis is that the spectrometer is seeing oppositely-flowing jets due to the reconnection, and that the wide lineshape is due to the reesulting bi-Maxwellian distribution. Much remains to be done on the spectrometer, particularly installing some optics that should increase our resolution by a factor of 4. It may be possible to get some good papers out of the work if things go well. Hopefully some of the optics will arrive next week and I'll actually start doing things in the lab. I helped Marc align the HeNe interferometer but that's mostly been it so far (it's not that powerful of a laser, but I suppose it's better to wear laser goggles and use those annoying little beam detection cards than risk ocular injury). Catherine Crouch was telling Jessica Gersh and me about how she had once used a UV laser, whose beam one had to track with thermal fax paper. The laser darkened the paper, which allowed you track the beam.
Things have been a bit slow (I definitely have more papers to go through) but they should pick up. Yesterday I was way too groggy all day from having stayed up ridiculously late from seeing Episode III, and today I spent a while helping![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rose_garden with some of the Honors written questions. Next May will so not be fun, at least until I get done with Honors.
Hopefully when I'm home this weekend I'll pick up some additional cooking supplies and equipment (without a measuring cup I've had to eyeball measurements for things like rice, and baking is pretty much impossible). Perhaps last summer's cooking co-op could be revived and improved? With the very limited kitchen space in ML, it is probably worth an attempt. The spell of unusually chilly weather has at least kept pests to a minimum; once the heat and humidity really set in, the dorm will be infested.
I really need to start working out again, once I shake off the persistent nagging cough that has been bothering me for almost a week now. Last night during fire training I just couldn't start one of the most important tools on the Tower: the Cutter's Edge roof saw. I tugged and tugged at the starting cord, but I guess I couldn't yank it hard enough to get the thing going. One is supposed to keep a foot on the saw to keep it from moving, put one hand on the chain brake for safety, and pull the cord vigorously. Starting our other saws, a K-12 and an ordinary Stihl chainsaw, is not supposed to be any easier. Raising 35-foot extension ladders is also tough.
Much remains to be done... for one thing I suppose I should be thinking about registering for the General GRE's sometime soon.rose_garden and sildra, when did you take yours? Would summer be a good time to get it out of the way? The earliest administration of the Physics subject test, which is the one that really counts and which is notoriously hard, is not until November. Do people tend to retake the physics GRE or does one really only get one chance?
I officially started research on Tuesday. For the most part I have been reading papers and old theses. I had a long discussion with the last student about his thesis, thus simultaneously helping him prepare for his defense and getting up to speed about some things I hadn't known about. I am going to work on the ion doppler spectrometer. The preliminary measurements made by the last student gave anomalously high temperatures (~200 eV) that plummeted right around the end of magnetic reconnection. The current hypothesis is that the spectrometer is seeing oppositely-flowing jets due to the reconnection, and that the wide lineshape is due to the reesulting bi-Maxwellian distribution. Much remains to be done on the spectrometer, particularly installing some optics that should increase our resolution by a factor of 4. It may be possible to get some good papers out of the work if things go well. Hopefully some of the optics will arrive next week and I'll actually start doing things in the lab. I helped Marc align the HeNe interferometer but that's mostly been it so far (it's not that powerful of a laser, but I suppose it's better to wear laser goggles and use those annoying little beam detection cards than risk ocular injury). Catherine Crouch was telling Jessica Gersh and me about how she had once used a UV laser, whose beam one had to track with thermal fax paper. The laser darkened the paper, which allowed you track the beam.
Things have been a bit slow (I definitely have more papers to go through) but they should pick up. Yesterday I was way too groggy all day from having stayed up ridiculously late from seeing Episode III, and today I spent a while helping
rose_garden with some of the Honors written questions. Next May will so not be fun, at least until I get done with Honors. Hopefully when I'm home this weekend I'll pick up some additional cooking supplies and equipment (without a measuring cup I've had to eyeball measurements for things like rice, and baking is pretty much impossible). Perhaps last summer's cooking co-op could be revived and improved? With the very limited kitchen space in ML, it is probably worth an attempt. The spell of unusually chilly weather has at least kept pests to a minimum; once the heat and humidity really set in, the dorm will be infested.
I really need to start working out again, once I shake off the persistent nagging cough that has been bothering me for almost a week now. Last night during fire training I just couldn't start one of the most important tools on the Tower: the Cutter's Edge roof saw. I tugged and tugged at the starting cord, but I guess I couldn't yank it hard enough to get the thing going. One is supposed to keep a foot on the saw to keep it from moving, put one hand on the chain brake for safety, and pull the cord vigorously. Starting our other saws, a K-12 and an ordinary Stihl chainsaw, is not supposed to be any easier. Raising 35-foot extension ladders is also tough.
Much remains to be done... for one thing I suppose I should be thinking about registering for the General GRE's sometime soon.
rose_garden and sildra, when did you take yours? Would summer be a good time to get it out of the way? The earliest administration of the Physics subject test, which is the one that really counts and which is notoriously hard, is not until November. Do people tend to retake the physics GRE or does one really only get one chance?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
GRE
Date: 2005-05-21 03:08 am (UTC)You get one chance on the physics GRE. Just take a practice physics GRE and then go over what you didn't get in the first go. Then repeat. But have no fear--there are grad schools that accept students regardless of low physics GRE scores. I wouldn't say it's hard, by the way. It's merely obnoxious and timed.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-21 05:56 am (UTC)November is when you take the physics GRE; any later than that and your scores won't reach grad schools in time. Everyone takes it then, and only then. Think of it this way: it's a hazing ritual. You just have to get through it to continue with your career. It's pretty awful, but then it will be over with and everyone will pat you on the back (in a congratulatory or sympathetic manner, depending) and say that it's a stupid test and that studies have shown there is no corrolation between doing well on the GRE and doing well in grad school (as they always say, at least there isn't a negative corrolation). Although a bad score pretty much will bar you from some of the top schools, it won't bar you from all of them (some of the top schools really don't seem to care at all).