REU 2011 Blog
The Magnet Lab's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program draws students from all over the country to spend eight weeks learning from the leading researchers in their chosen field. This blog chronicles two undergraduates interested in science careers – one from a large university and another from a small college – as they learn their way around the lab and expand their research horizons.
By Kathleen Laufenberg
Meet two of tomorrow's scientists: Mag Lab interns Daniel Escobedo and Alesha Shorts
Daniel, Week 8
On Tuesday of his final week, Daniel was about 25 percent done with the fourth version of his final poster (An Analysis of Bronze-Process Nb3Sn Filament Fractures), which was due Wednesday at noon. He also needed to polish some samples.
"I think tomorrow, I have class at 9:30, but I think I'm going to show up, if I can, maybe at 8 a.m. … expand the (poster's) results section, remove conclusions … (mentor-scientist Peter Lee) wants me to put a summary instead and a future work section. I think that's about it.
"From what I've heard, Dr. (Eric) Hellstrom and Dr. Ulf (Trociewitz) are sticklers … about what we're going to put on (our posters) … I'm pretty confident I can answer whatever questions they ask of me.
"I always figure when you start a job, you finish it. … I definitely want to leave Dr. Lee with the samples done and polished. I would feel bad if I hadn't finished this … I think he might eventually end up using it in some way to prove his theories.
"It's been awesome. I feel like I've gotten so much more insight into what the field is like. I really didn't have much of a clue when it came to this because I really hadn't gotten work experience like this before. I'm definitely grateful for everything. … The summer, I would say, has been rewarding but hard earned. Even to now, I'm struggling, trying to finish this poster on the fourth revision."
Alesha, Week 8
On Tuesday of her last week, Alesha had a few tweaks to make to her poster (Molecular Characterization of the Water-Soluble Species Extracted from the Deepwater Horizon Crude by Negative-Ion Electrospray Ionization FT-ICR Mass Spectrometry), due Wednesday at noon.
"I have three small things I have to fix, and then send it to Dr. (Alan) Marshall, and then I'll fix whatever he suggests, and then I'm done.
"I definitely had an amazing time. I've learned so many things about science in this field that I didn't even know existed. It makes sense, but I didn't realize you could do this kind of thing with the instruments they're using. If I ever hear about another (oil spill), I would definitely think about it in a different way, about how I was able to characterize the water-soluble components and … the effect on the environment.
"Leaving is very bittersweet. It will be sad. … I do feel like I've had a really amazing experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Daniel, Week 7
Daniel talks about the heat-treatment process he's doing for his project, his ideas on how to make his poster, and his assessment of what he's learned.
"It's a very long process. It's very tedious. … But (mentor-scientist Peter Lee) said it's a process that's been 12 years of refinement. Every step is essential to what he's looking for: He wants to find out what causes these wires to break. He wants to find some strong correlation about the appearances of these voids and these missing ends with these fractures, and maybe predetermining, 'this is going to break at this temperature, and this is apparent because of these voids.'
"For my poster, I'm going to get pictures of every machine I worked on, and as many tools as I can … describing from beginning to end how this process occurs.
"Like really, honestly, this is definitely the most satisfying experience I've had as far as using some of the knowledge that I've gained from mechanical engineering. Because up to this point, I really haven't been able to us any of the knowledge I've learned from all my classes. It's really cool to see it in action, to see that you're a researcher. That's pretty cool."
Alesa, Week 7
Alesha talks about hearing from a professor at Gardner-Webb University, where she will be a senior this fall, wrapping up her work at the lab, and her future plans.
"One of our professors e-mailed Jackie and I, and he said he was in the barbershop reading the "Shelby Star" (newspaper) and he saw the story about us … that was really cool.
"I thought that I was done with everything last week, and then I discovered that I had to process four more spectra, so I was officially done as of yesterday with my project! So now I am just getting things together, putting my poster together, getting ready to present.
"I have talked a lot to (mentor-scientist) Jackie (Jarvis) about going to grad school. A lot of the things she said made sense to me. I think the best thing for me is to just go straight to graduate school."
Daniel, Week 7
Daniel talks about the heat-treatment process he's doing for his project, his ideas on how to make his poster, and his assessment of what he's learned.
"It's a very long process. It's very tedious. … But (mentor-scientist Peter Lee) said it's a process that's been 12 years of refinement. Every step is essential to what he's looking for: He wants to find out what causes these wires to break. He wants to find some strong correlation about the appearances of these voids and these missing ends with these fractures, and maybe predetermining, 'this is going to break at this temperature, and this is apparent because of these voids.'
"For my poster, I'm going to get pictures of every machine I worked on, and as many tools as I can … describing from beginning to end how this process occurs.
"Like really, honestly, this is definitely the most satisfying experience I've had as far as using some of the knowledge that I've gained from mechanical engineering. Because up to this point, I really haven't been able to us any of the knowledge I've learned from all my classes. It's really cool to see it in action, to see that you're a researcher. That's pretty cool."
Alesa, Week 7
Alesha talks about hearing from a professor at Gardner-Webb University, where she will be a senior this fall, wrapping up her work at the lab, and her future plans.
"One of our professors e-mailed Jackie and I, and he said he was in the barbershop reading the "Shelby Star" (newspaper) and he saw the story about us … that was really cool.
"I thought that I was done with everything last week, and then I discovered that I had to process four more spectra, so I was officially done as of yesterday with my project! So now I am just getting things together, putting my poster together, getting ready to present.
"I have talked a lot to (mentor-scientist) Jackie (Jarvis) about going to grad school. A lot of the things she said made sense to me. I think the best thing for me is to just go straight to graduate school."
Alesa Shorts, Week 6
Alesha talks about her technical work collecting petroleum data and her emotional life as her internship winds to a close.
"I was running my samples this week … we ran some blanks, and we ran just the plain crude (oil), so we had stuff to compare my samples to. Other than that, I've been doing data processing.
"You use the program that NHMFL created. … You have to go through and make sure all the peak assignments are correct and reassign any that didn't get assigned correctly. …
"There's also a big section of things that are called 'no hits,' and they're just things that never got assigned in the first place. So we take those and put them in another worksheet and compare the mass on this, like, formula-calculator, and it will bring up a list of all the things that it could be with that mass. Then we have to decide which compound it's most likely to be.
"I guess technically I have not reassigned anything, but I have assigned no hits. …You have to sit down and decide which compound it is, and it's hard. … You have to have a good idea of what should be in your sample.
"I think I'll be able to finish data processing and get all my figures made before the end of this week, and so that will give me a whole week to work on my poster.
"It's has been a very tough time since I've been here. … I've had emotional highs and emotional lows, but I think that's just because of everything going on with my family moving and just not being there. Knowing that when I go home they won't be there. I've been trying not to focus on it, but sometimes I just can't help it. I don't have any roommates, so when I go home for the evening, it's kinda hard to not to think about that kind of thing. While I'm here I can focus on work, but once I get home, I have to distract myself.
"Sometimes in the evening, I go over to her (Mag Lab mentor Jackie Jarvis') house. We've made spaghetti and watched movies, and I play with her dog Toby, and he's adorable. He's a pitbull-something mix. He has the most relaxed personality I have ever seen in a dog.
"She has been (a lifesaver), definitely. … I've told her when I go back (to North Carolina, where they're both from), I'm going to go see her parents and, like, introduce myself."
Click here to read an article about Alesha and her mentor Jackie Jarvis in the Shelby Star
Daniel Escobedo, Week 6
Alesha Shorts, Week 4
This week, you can watch Alesha work in this 1½ minute video. She's in the Ion Cyclotron Resonance lab, where samples of petroleum and biofuels are analyzed. Alesha's samples are petroleum dissolved in seawater from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
Alesha Shorts, Week 3
"This week, we had a consultant (a retired Exxon Mobile scientist) and so we had a lot of meetings all week. He's an expert in separations, which means that if you have a big mixture of different compounds, he's an expert in identifying what kind of extractant you would need to separate a certain part of your sample.
He knows a lot about what you should see in the (Ion Cyclotron Resonance) instrument, what kind of results you should have if the separation occurred correctly. The grad students, even the postdocs, everybody did presentations of their research and showed their results, like how the instrument is behaving with different things. He was pulling papers to give to everybody to help with their problems.
I got my assignment this week, too, for what I will have on my (final project) poster: I'm going to be running a liquid-liquid extraction on the Deepwater Horizon crude oil. And basically that separates out organic acids, that's one group, and neutrals and bases. And then I will take those two samples and do the data processing using the 9.4 tesla ICR magnet.
I will have to do the sample prep, and she (mentor scientist Jackie Jarvis) might let me load the spray rig. But other than that – like turning all the instrument stuff on, she will have to be with me.
I've actually started my assignment already. You have to mix a sample of crude oil in seawater. Yesterday, we went and checked it, but it had formed an emulsion, so we had to add more seawater to it. So now it is going to mix for another two days. So basically, so far, all I've done is just mix the oil and water."
Daniel Escobedo, Week 3
This week, Daniel learned how to prepare a sample of superconducting wire to be heat-treated. Teaching him was research associate and lab manager Bill Starch. Here's some of the conversation between them during Daniel's lab lesson:
"You need to go cut your (superconducting) wires 2 ½ inches and put them in the tubes," Bill says. "But we've got to clean the (wire) samples with alcohol before we put them in there. What you want to do is wipe the samples off and lay them down and let them dry first."
After the wire goes into the tube, Daniel learns to use a (hydrogen) lab torch to vacuum seal the tube.
"This is the fun part," he says. "I have to (learn how to) get rid of that pointy edge (on the glass tube). Bill was telling me if you leave it on, it's sharp as a needle…On the side (of the tube), we kind of make a hook because I need to pull out these samples from the furnace, and I'm going to use a wire to pull them out, so I need something to grab the sample with, so that's why we make the hooks on the side."
"Red is always your gas," Bill says as he lights the torch, then hands it to Daniel.
"Now what you want to do is concentrate in this area right here," Bill instructs. "If you get too close to your sample, you'll melt your O-rings. … That was too close…. Be careful. Always try to keep your flame down towards the brick…. It's going to take some time. There you go. … Soften it up. Turn it. … Now, melt this side down. Check your vacuum… Done!
"Now … this is the shutdown procedure: Close the hydrogen down."
"Righty-tighty," Daniel says.
"Yup. … Open up your red nob on your torch."
"This one?"
"Yeah, open it up. …Now close it. Make sure all three are shut and there you go. Everything is shut off independently."
"Fun stuff," Daniel says. "Bill gets to do fun stuff all the time."
Week 2
Daniel Escobedo
In his second week, Daniel continues to work at a computer, examining 463 images of used superconducting wire (niobium tin) magnified 200 times. His mentor, scientist Peter Lee, is trying to determine what causes this superconducting wire to crack.
"I was saving to the Z-drive (of the computer), but it's a temporary drive and I lost two days of work! I had all of this done, but now I'm doing it all over. I told Dr. Lee that I couldn't believe it, that I'd deleted everything. Two days of work! But I didn't give up.
I'm looking to see if the voids force (the wire) to crack, and I've gotten to the point now that I've done this so many times that I notice things I probably didn't notice before. I know exactly where the crack is almost without even looking.
It's interesting definitely. Everyday, I get a better understanding of what Dr. Lee is trying to prove, and that makes it get even more interesting. It would be awesome if he gets to prove whatever he wants to prove while I'm here. If I had to do research, it would be something like this, because it's like being a pioneer in something completely new.
I think pretty soon I'm going to get to program the heat controller for the furnaces, and so I'll be doing something completely different. That's going to be a real challenge."
Alesha Shorts
In her second week, Alesha — who also turned 21 this week! — had several Big Moments as she learned to how to examine oil samples taken from the BP spill in the Gulf.
"I learned a couple of different things. I learned how to turn on the (Ion Cyclotron Resonance machine). It's like 20 different steps, and it's kind of a big deal to turn it on and off. There's a lot more to it than I thought. If you miss a step, it could be detrimental to the instrument. They have a notebook, with the steps you follow, and a logbook that you fill out to say when you used it and how it functioned and if you had to do any maintenance on it.
I learned how to do a sample prep, too; I'd read how to do it, but I hadn't ever actually worked with doing it. The sample loads into a syringe, and you inject it into the ICR instrument. … You check the (computer-screen) readout to see if it loaded right. I guess it surprised me to see how the instrument was acting; I guess I thought it would be more perfect. The spray wasn't working very well. I think that was our biggest problem. It kept clogging a lot.
And we did data processing, which is the hardest part. You have to tell (the computer program) which compounds to calibrate. … You have to calibrate (some data findings) to sort-of smooth it out. The calibrating part I've gotten better at. The easy ones, I can do.
And I went to a meeting Wednesday evening at (ICR program director) Dr. (Alan) Marshall's house; there were, like, 20 people there and a girl wh4o wants to do her post-doc here gave her proposal. It did kind of surprise me — you have it in a very informal setting. I can only hope if I'm presenting (to do post-doc work) that it could be in a setting like that. People were asking tough questions, but the atmosphere was relaxing."
Daniel Escobedo
Daniel Escobedo, a bilingual engineering major from Miami, and Alesha Shorts, an environmental chemistry major from rural North Carolina, are two of the 19 college interns at the Magnet Lab this summer. They're part of an intensive, eight-week program, Research Experiences for Undergraduates, that matches students with scientists. Under the watchful eyes of their mentors, these students explore materials and other phenomena at extreme magnet fields, pressures and temperatures.
We'll update you each week on what Alesha and Daniel are doing. But for now, here's a brief look at who they are:
Daniel Escobedo, 20, will be a senior at Florida State University this fall. The mechanical engineering major is also part of the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate Program. That means he must serve at least three years in the Navy after he graduates — and that he must maintain a 3.3 grade point average each semester.
"If I'm taking four classes, that means I've got to get two As and two Bs."
He grew up in Miami Springs, the oldest of three kids. His dad is a firefighter; his mom works at home. His family is bilingual: His mom was born in Cuba, and his dad in New York.
"When I was growing up, I always spoke to my mom in Spanish, and to my dad in English."
One of his first memories of being mechanical came when he was only 11. His aunt's grandfather clock stopped working. He took it apart and got it ticking again.
"It was very cool to see I could fix something."
This summer, in addition to his internship at the lab, he's also taking two classes at FSU and another in Gainesville. That leaves him little time to indulge in his favorite recreation: weight lifting and working out. Growing up in Miami, he also got into surfing, but hasn't had much time for that either. Or listening to his favorite reggae and ska tunes.
His mentor during the summer is Peter Lee, a scholar-scientist studying superconductivity. Daniel will be working at the Applied Superconductivity Center across the street from the Magnet Lab. His first few days, he worked on a computer, cataloging the presence of cracks, and other features, in close-up images of brittle superconducting materials.
"These materials aren't really resistant, so the electricity just shoots through them, and this force eventually creates fatigue and cracks. That's what the research is based on: What forms these cracks and causes them to break.
"I'm excited," he said of his internship. "It's nice to finally use some of the knowledge that I've been learning for the past three years."
Alesha Shorts
Alesha Shorts, 20, will be a senior this fall at Gardner-Webb University — a small, private, Christian university — in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. She's studying environmental chemistry.
If she wasn't interning at the Mag Lab — and experiencing her first time living in a large dorm on the Florida State University campus — she'd be helping her mom, dad and older brother (she's the youngest of two) move to Colorado. Her mother was promoted to campus controller for Johnson & Wales University — but at its Denver campus, not its Charlotte, N.C. where she's long been employed.
"It's going to be rough when I go back," Alesha said of her senior year in tiny Boiling Springs (population: 4,301).
Her father tests water systems to make sure the water meets certain standards.
"I always thought I would follow in my mom's footsteps, but it's my brother who is in accounting just like my mom. Recently I've realized that I actually have a lot more in common with my dad because he's doing stuff with well-water systems … adding the different chemicals that they need."
Although chemistry is now at the center of her life, she didn't even like it in high-school.
"I think it was the teacher I had. He really talked over my head, and I just didn't do well. But in college, the professor was great and explained everything. I really enjoyed the class."
As a result, she enrolled in another chemistry class, then another and another. She also learned to make jewelry as a way to unwind. Her first week at the lab, she wore a pair of pretty, green-beaded earrings she'd recently created.
It's no coincidence that her mentor is graduate assistant Jackie Jarvis, a scientist working in the lab's Ion Cyclotron Resonance program. Jarvis is also from North Carolina and went to the same small university. She asked professors at Gardner-Webb to share information about the Mag Lab's REU program, in hopes of exposing some young scientists to the incredible research opportunities at the Mag Lab.
Using oil samples taken from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Jarvis will show Alesha how data on petroleum is collected and analyzed at the lab. That will allow Alesha to learn about the lab's sophisticated array of ICR magnets and computer systems.
For more information about the Mag Lab's REU program contact Jose Sanchez at sanchez@magnet.fsu.edu or (850) 645-0033.
Classroom Outreach
