July 7 MSTF Spider Webbing

July 7, 2008
Today was a quiet day in the lab after the power outage on Thursday. They still have not determined the problem or why the system did not reroute the power as it was designed to do. Some information was loss from the 400 NMR’s but no problems with the 800 NMR. We are continuing to design an experiment for the high school level. We have developed problems how to evaluate the lab on a quantitative scale. I came up with the idea of testing the viscosity of each fluid with different sizes of glass tubing and comparing it to a standard. This is not a very good quantitative test because it has qualitative values but this is the best we have. We are limited to lack of equipment and the student expertise to operate that equipment. I’m starting on writing the lab directions. It is becoming long but I need to make sure that the students can do the lab with minimal help from the instructor. If you make the directions unclear the students will either default the lab or ask so many questions that the instructor does the lab for them. We also continued to discuss the power point due on Tuesday. Janelle, Emilee, and Tom the undergraduates and graduate assistants are always friendly, patient, and helpful! It was good to spend a little time in the afternoon to work on the projects in are research groups.