Worked today for the second and last day of the Schools Day visit. I was asked to help out with the SEM prep in the morning so I popped over and listened to some of the spiel to see what I needed to talk about. The first school group that passed through was Newington College, out from near Stanmore/Enmore way. They were relatively well behaved I guess, but were more interested in the -80°C deep freezer for cell culture in the room than the SEM stuff. I then took the groups from the next school which was Canterbury Girls High. The first out of the two groups was pretty rude really, didn't pay much attention and were really chomping at the bit to play with the 3D glasses.... like elementary kids, when they were in Grade 11/Form 5. Quite immature I felt. The second group from Canterbury Girls were much more behaved and interested, asking questions and being attentive.
Part of the talk on SEM prep was showing how the splutter coater worked. Tony showed me how to run it and coat, and it was pretty nifty to actually drive the machine since I had never done it before, so I guess in the future, I could probably take a stab at coating myself if I needed too haha, if I can figure out how to operate the vacuum pump system since it was already in vacuum state. Turning up the argon gas to a particular point before applying the 800v across the plates was interesting, and it generated a lot more heat than I expected, so I am definitely now more aware of the heat problems in the coating, and the importance of thin coating times. It typically takes about 40 second to coat the sample to about 20nm.
Afterwards there was a combined from from Erina Highschool and some students from the Sydney Distance Education system. They were quite interested and receptive to the information. I had lunch and in the afternoon block I went back to TEM prep to help out there. The two schools that passed through for that block was Scots College and Randwick Boys. I was pretty relaxed and laid back about it all, just sitting on a stool while talking and passing the samples around and answering questions. They were far better behaved with the TEM prep than we expected because we had a warning from one of the other staffers who had them in the morning that they were a bit unruly. I was then told by one of the other people helping out at the end that she really liked the way I could talk to them so easily and casually, and that I was just able to talk in a flowing way because for her, and some of the other people, they were stumbling on what to talk about, forgetting things to mention etc. I guess it is because I have had far more experience in talking haha, and also I'm so casual about a lot of what I do. No point getting worked up too much.
After the schools visit was over, I had a afternoon tea/lunch/coffee with a friend of mine at Well Connected cafe on Glebe Point Road. They have some retro-ish furniture that we sat on and ordered. I got the dips selection with turkish bread, and they got a bacon and egg lavash bread wrap. Iced coffee and cappuccino respectively. And we talked, chatted, laughed, complained about a lot of things, life, kendo, relationships, gossip, that kind of thing. It was fun, lots of fun, to the point we spent about two hours in the cafe LOL.... I don't think the cafe people minded though, they certainly didn't try to move us on or anything like that. I like places like that, where they just let you enjoy the atmosphere and environment. Afterwards we walked up to Central Station/Railway Square where they caught the bus and I got a train home. I actually ended up on the same train as my dad who was returning from the City, so we walked home together from the station.
There hasn't been any new developments on the job front, no emails etc, but it's still early days yet. There was a massive spike in hits to the blog yesterday, 20 actually, so that's great ^^ Thank you to all the visitors who dropped by to take a look, I hope you liked it and you might come back some more.
Oh, and I got told that this is a 'lifeblog' because, duh, I'm blogging about life in general. Hmm.
Well, tonight will be quiet probably, it's raining too, which is a bit coolish. Tomorrow is a seminar being given by my supervisor so I should attend that. No training in the afternoon, but I won't be going to night training because of the weather and general issues with training so late and being tired..... Probably just go home after the seminar if there is no actual work to be done as such. Kind of looking forward to the weekend as I will be having another D&D v4.0 session on Sunday.
Part of the talk on SEM prep was showing how the splutter coater worked. Tony showed me how to run it and coat, and it was pretty nifty to actually drive the machine since I had never done it before, so I guess in the future, I could probably take a stab at coating myself if I needed too haha, if I can figure out how to operate the vacuum pump system since it was already in vacuum state. Turning up the argon gas to a particular point before applying the 800v across the plates was interesting, and it generated a lot more heat than I expected, so I am definitely now more aware of the heat problems in the coating, and the importance of thin coating times. It typically takes about 40 second to coat the sample to about 20nm.
Afterwards there was a combined from from Erina Highschool and some students from the Sydney Distance Education system. They were quite interested and receptive to the information. I had lunch and in the afternoon block I went back to TEM prep to help out there. The two schools that passed through for that block was Scots College and Randwick Boys. I was pretty relaxed and laid back about it all, just sitting on a stool while talking and passing the samples around and answering questions. They were far better behaved with the TEM prep than we expected because we had a warning from one of the other staffers who had them in the morning that they were a bit unruly. I was then told by one of the other people helping out at the end that she really liked the way I could talk to them so easily and casually, and that I was just able to talk in a flowing way because for her, and some of the other people, they were stumbling on what to talk about, forgetting things to mention etc. I guess it is because I have had far more experience in talking haha, and also I'm so casual about a lot of what I do. No point getting worked up too much.
After the schools visit was over, I had a afternoon tea/lunch/coffee with a friend of mine at Well Connected cafe on Glebe Point Road. They have some retro-ish furniture that we sat on and ordered. I got the dips selection with turkish bread, and they got a bacon and egg lavash bread wrap. Iced coffee and cappuccino respectively. And we talked, chatted, laughed, complained about a lot of things, life, kendo, relationships, gossip, that kind of thing. It was fun, lots of fun, to the point we spent about two hours in the cafe LOL.... I don't think the cafe people minded though, they certainly didn't try to move us on or anything like that. I like places like that, where they just let you enjoy the atmosphere and environment. Afterwards we walked up to Central Station/Railway Square where they caught the bus and I got a train home. I actually ended up on the same train as my dad who was returning from the City, so we walked home together from the station.
There hasn't been any new developments on the job front, no emails etc, but it's still early days yet. There was a massive spike in hits to the blog yesterday, 20 actually, so that's great ^^ Thank you to all the visitors who dropped by to take a look, I hope you liked it and you might come back some more.
Oh, and I got told that this is a 'lifeblog' because, duh, I'm blogging about life in general. Hmm.
Well, tonight will be quiet probably, it's raining too, which is a bit coolish. Tomorrow is a seminar being given by my supervisor so I should attend that. No training in the afternoon, but I won't be going to night training because of the weather and general issues with training so late and being tired..... Probably just go home after the seminar if there is no actual work to be done as such. Kind of looking forward to the weekend as I will be having another D&D v4.0 session on Sunday.
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