It’s… Get ready for it, HUMPDAY!!!!!

Anyways, hi friends!

Cameron again. I hope everyone is enjoying their week so far. Mine has been especially fabulous, and we started a new activity in preparation for the main project. Yesterday, I cleaned filters and put them in their proper placement. Today I tested the optical density of each, which is where we place them into a machine and run them through the color spectrum, recording how much light gets through. Hers a picture of the machine:


Jason McNeill (in the picture above) was my guide during this activity, and it was quite interesting utilizing the software. Despite several technical difficulties, I ended up processing all 50 plates in time for Jason to check their weights using a very, very picky machine. It took 15 minutes for just one filter at one point!
After helping out Jason, Mrs. Michelle took me to meet Andrew Dart, where we discussed some of the finer points of his machine. This machine, as it so happened to be, was the one we used for ECMs, and is picture below along with Andrew.

Andrew built both this and the extremely complicated machine hidden behind the one we used. It’s pretty awesome! He also works on the fireman project I discussed in my first post. Pretty cool, right? Not to mention he looks kind of like Sherlock from Masterpiece Mysteries…

Anyway, that’s pretty much everything for today.

Happy Humpday everyone!
Cameron L.

Fear ye all who enter here, for…
IIIIIIIIII’mmm baaaaaaaaaaccckkk!
Hey all,

Today’s the first day back for the new week, and I hope everyone had a wonderful day.
For me, I’d call today a good day, if a little on the less exciting side. However, it did start out interesting with a fire truck in front of one of the entrances to RTI, as depicted below:

Never figured out why it was there, but I hope everyone was safe!

Otherwise, there were a ton of meetings, with a right off the back discussion with Dr. Thornburg, Emily, and I on questions with what he does at RTI and his average workday. After meeting Dr. Thornburg, Mrs. Michelle and I shipped out some sensors to one of the projects she started. Here’s a picture of the final packaging:

After that, we went to a safety meeting where I trailed behind lost as they argued over room numbers and the like. Apparently, they were making sure the old building design door numbers and the new blue print door numbers matched up. Interestin, to say the least. Later, Mrs. Allen stopped by for a quick check up and tour by Dr. Thornburg. 

After meeting Mrs. Allen, but before lunch, we learned how to use the software for the new micropems, which we are starting work on tomorrow. For lunch, I had a delicious cheeseburger and onion rings, and happened to meet Jonathan and Kiran who had transferred from to the forensics department of RTI for this week, an unexpected, but welcome, surprise.

After lunch, we retrieved data from some field tests until a meeting with Mr. Mecham, who gave some life tips and shared his background with us, much as with Dr. Thornburg this morning.

That pretty much concludes my day. I hope you all enjoy your day as well!

Sincerely,

Cameron L.

P.S. For those confused with the title’s joke, 1) it’s a reference to Star Wars, and 2) RTI stands for research triangle institute, so I just extended the first word for RTI to make ReTI… So yeah, hope you enjoyed the joke!

Hi all,

So today was a busy day!

We started micropem testing, then had a meeting with Mr. Marty, a chemical engineer at RTI, which lasted an hour and a half. We also visited his labs, but weren’t allowed a picture inside due to defense projects. Here’s one of us outside the door though!

After that was a lunch meeting with Mrs. Swung-Hyun, another worker at RTI in my building (number 11). Both mewing were extremely informative, although I’m partial to Mr. Marty’s myself since I want to be a chemical engineer.

After lunch, I suited up in my testing gear (featured below, excluding the static gun, my inspiration for today’s title) and started collecting data by walking around various areas in the vicinity while the pumps sucked in nearby air.

All in all, an exciting day. I hope you enjoyed my update!

Cameron L.

Hello all!

Today was a busy day, as all good days are, sometimes. Anyways, it started out extremely interesting as I met the mysterious bad parker of building 11. Apparently, whoever they are, they always park on the line so that no car is to close to theirs. Usually it’s in the back, but today they were in the front row, so many, many more people saw them. Here’s what it looked like:

Incredibly rude, right? If you say no, I want you to move your car now. Literally, stop reading and move your car to the appropriate position. Done? Now let’s continue.

Today’s first task was aldehyde testing, and as we moved to Johnson building for the appropriate equipment, we ran across this little guy here:

… Or maybe not so little. The point is, the only reason I noticed was a startled scream that shocked me into stopping. That was fun, if slightly scary. Taking the long path due to Mrs. Michelle’s insistence, we finally arrived at our destination.

Now, we all know classroom work hardly seems like work in real life, right? Well, aldehyde sampling is a lot like classroom work, where we mix a bunch of chemicals and measure the results, but with this fancy machine:

Which is a HPLC system, or high pressure liquid chromatography system. This does a lot of minor measurements and records data that the naked eye wouldn’t normally see.

Anyways, after that we ate my final lunch at RTI before heading to meet Leag Johnson, a biochemist at RTI. After that meeting, I prepared sample filters for equilibration and post ODs/graphs.

Hope you enjoyed my day!

Cameron L.

P.S. Here’s some extras from today.

Hazardous waste dispenser 

Funny sign

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​
Video of vacumn to get rid Air/gas

Containers for the aldehyde

Hello friends!

Not much to talk about today, sadly. Due to the phenomenal (if I do say so myself) work ethics of Mrs. Michelle and myself, we finished a lot of work during the first four days of this week. Unfortunately, our enthusiasm was not successfully mimicked by he rest of the department, so the last major project was delayed since we didn’t have the neccessary devices yet.

However, despite this tragic set back (absolutely tragic, I tell you), we were able to plow forward and make progress on the set back project, and we also aided other groups, which included work on a new inlet for the ECMs, to testing the optical density of some data Dr. Thornburg sent back from India.

In addition to our work, Emily and I also met with Mrs. Ginger Rothrock, one of the more senior workers at RTI. To those of you wondering, yes, this is the wife to our beloved sixth grade science teacher, who left some years ago.

Since there were no new projects or experiments today, I didn’t manage to get any attention grabbing photos. However, we should have the neccessary requirements to begin testing on a new project next week, so tune in for some awesome experiments on Tuesday!

Have a wonderful weekend!

–Cameron

– said no one ever.

Hello friends!

As you may have guessed (or not) from the title, today was mainly focused on testing the EMCs. We started after a quick job receiving and shipping a few items in Bay 3 (or section 3) of the building, and then returned to our normal station in bay 4 to meet with mr. J. Lynn Davis and Andrew Dart to discuss what they do at RTI. I also got to meet up with Emily and her guide, Phillip Durham, who seemed to be a pretty cool dude.

After lunch, we started working with the EMCs again. As the main person testing the filters (with my guide providing aid if needed), I got to light the kerosene lamp needed to produce the black carbon smoke, which was fun. The not so fun part ended up being blowing out the flame, because you get a big whiff of black carbon too. Do you know what that smells like? Imagine eating a box of chalk. It’s roughly the same feeling.

Being the main on that also means you get a lot of black carbon on you as well. Say goodbye to clean hands, folks. That’s a pipe dream.

Anyways, we got through a ton of tests today, and (despite screwing up several tests), we’re almost done with the work. I’ve think I may have gotten the nickname butterfingers at one point… Anyway, we expect to finish tomorrow, so wish us luck, please!

So, without further ado, Butterfingers signing off!

It’s… Get ready for it, HUMPDAY!!!!!

Anyways, hi friends!

Cameron again. I hope everyone is enjoying their week so far. Mine has been especially fabulous, and we started a new activity in preparation for the main project. Yesterday, I cleaned filters and put them in their proper placement. Today I tested the optical density of each, which is where we place them into a machine and run them through the color spectrum, recording how much light gets through. Hers a picture of the machine:

Jason McNeill (in the picture above) was my guide during this activity, and it was quite interesting utilizing the software. Despite several technical difficulties, I ended up processing all 50 plates in time for Jason to check their weights using a very, very picky machine. It took 15 minutes for just one filter at one point!

After helping out Jason, Mrs. Michelle took me to meet Andrew Dart, where we discussed some of the finer points of his machine. This machine, as it so happened to be, was the one we used for ECMs, and is picture below along with Andrew.

Andrew built both this and the extremely complicated machine hidden behind the one we used. It’s pretty awesome! He also works on the fireman project I discussed in my first post. Pretty cool, right? Not to mention he looks kind of like Sherlock from Masterpiece Mysteries…

Anyway, that’s pretty much everything for today.

Happy Humpday everyone!

Cameron L.