NREL Overview
The Sciences!
Working at NREL was a great experience! I only spent about 2-3 days working on contact angles (which I was talking about last update), but then shifted gears to automating surface analysis. I really liked doing this, and it turns out I'm pretty good at it! I worked with X-ray and Ultraviolet Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS and UPS).
An Image of PES (Image credit: Wikipedia)
XPS and UPS are different types of Photoemission Spectroscopy (PES), which use different photons to emit electrons. In PES, a beam of light of a specific energy is sent onto a surface, which kicks electrons out of their material. A device then measures how many electrons of different energies are emitted. By comparing their energy to the energy of the incident photons, we can determine how many electrons of what energy there were in the material (before we destroyed it with lasers).
But why should we care about any of this you ask? By determining the energies of the electrons around a material, we can determine exactly how the material is bonded and if the processes we did to make it actually did what we wanted, or we can figure out what it is that causes the effects of other things (like Perovskites decaying). Knowing what we're working with is important for science.
Before I got to NREL, it would take a fairly long time to perform analysis of this process, and what could be done was subject to human error. Basically, the machine just outputs a text file with the raw data. From there, scientists need to put it into a program, and then manually determine the background levels, how many peaks there are, and fit background curves. This process takes a long time, and is subject to human bias, since it has people directly working with the data, rather than the data being analyzed by a general rule. This means that analysis takes a long time, and it's hard to be sure it's accurate, since it takes so many scientist-hours to analyze. This prevents large-scale studies from being done, and wastes valuable time.
By the I left NREL (spoilers!), I had written a code automating this process, enabling new categories of study. Basically, before, they could only analyze individual peaks, now that there's a standard procedure for measuring say, the width of the electron peaks or the noise levels in the data. This lets them know more about the material, which should help them design perovskites better. Because of the work I did, they have a higher quantity and quality of data from their measurements, and there are some things we've found (specific to what I'm worked on) that we're writing up into a paper. It's not out yet, but it's being worked on. For now, I just post the poster that I made describing the project
Poster I made describing my work (Image Credit: Me)
Me presenting the poster at the end of the year (Image Credit: Me)
Physics Teaching
Three weeks before the end of my internship at NREL, I was getting ready for my road-trip. Thinking about who to visit, and mapping out my route. It was during this time that Quinn asked me if I wanted to teach high schoolers Physics in Scottsdale. Here's basically how it went down.
Quinn: "A physics teacher quit in Scottsdale, want to work there?"
Me: "Pht. Naw. But let me ask some people."
Me - Jon: "Hey, want to uproot your life, move halfway across the country, and teach physics to people with no previous notice?"
Jon: "Umm..... no? That sounds really hard and soon and I don't think I want to commit to moving across the nation for that."
Me: "Cool."
I figured that was the end of it. But, the next day Daniel messaged me.
Daniel: "My coworker quit at BASIS Scottsdale, want to teach physics?"
Me: "Funny story, but no. I guess I could ask James though."
Now here, I decided I should make an actual argument to James since Jon raised some valid points against it.
Me - James: "Want to teach Physics at scottsdale in three weeks? It'd be good because:
1. I don't think you're doing anything right now.
2. It's a good thing to do (somebody should teach those kids physics).
3. You might like it.
4. It's only a commitment for 9 month, and is good experience regardless of if you want to teach or not."
James - Me: "Not really. But what about you?"
Me: "Hm... You make some good points."
So now I teach physics at BASIS Scottsdale.
Me at my desk at BASIS (Image Credit: Travis)
Adventure is out there!
While at NREL, one of the main draws was all the stuff I was able to do with other people. Expect to hear more of some of these adventures, but I spent a lot of time hiking, got into backpacking, played soccer, went to pizza and microbreweries, climbed trees and rock-walls, rode bikes, ventured downtown, visited Boulder, traversed parts of the Rockies, went camping, and more. Expect more on these later (also, feel free to ask me about them if you see me in person).
Theresa, Malia, and myself on our Fourth of July adventure. Also the lightning storm which would catch up with us. (Image Credit: Theresa)
Now that I'm in Scottsdale, I've established my presence as eccentric, excited physics teacher with a huge beard and love for hiking. Several adventures have ensued, which will be featured in future updates (Hiking through a canyon, driving all over the place, hiking in CA, game nights, D&D, Thanksgiving in Indiana, a visit to Wheaton etc.)
Bornell and me at Evviva! in Wheaton (Image Credit: Bornell)
Appalachian Trail and beyond
After a couple weeks teaching, I knew that I didn't want to make a career out of it. I'm decent at it (I think, we'll see after my students take the AP test), but don't really like it, and don't enjoy working at BASIS (it's very achievement oriented, leaves less space for adventures). Teaching is also really draining on my energy and time-consuming. It also made me miss Christmas in Romania. I decided that a road-trip at the end of the school year was not enough, I needed to do something more. As I've started hiking a lot more lately, I decided I'd hike the Appalachian Trail. It's a 2180 mile trail from Maine to Georgia, that I hope to go on in June - November (no biggie). After that, I think I'm going to go to grad school for Informatics or Data Analytics so I can do more science. Or, perhaps I'll do data analytics for a renewable energy company, we'll see. Or maybe something random will happen. Only time can tell.
The red line shows the Appalachian Trail (Image Credit: Wikipedia)
