Chemical Gardens and Measuring Bubbles

My experience with my research so far in May has been very progressive. When I first started after my little summer break, only a week, I got straight into work, however, I didn’t know just what I was doing yet. After coming back my research mentor and I discussed that I would be continuing another student’s research so that she would be able to finish it in the fall. Luckily that student is a friend of mine, and she was very helpful in getting me started with her previous work.

When starting, the problems I encountered were mostly the setup of the experiment. Since this experiment had been on such a long pause, getting the setup right was difficult. I am still in this stage. I would have to make a setup that would be able to capture the image of a bubble without catching glare from the container. This is a somewhat difficult task that I am getting over with using acrylic instead of glass, as recommended by the previous student. My goal is to have less glare from the surrounding environment to get a clearer view of the bubbles for proper analysis. This analysis would help me figure out what exactly these bubbles are made of.

So far, I’ve successfully created a code that is able to analyze how many bubbles are in a solution and make acrylic test tubes. Using acrylic instead of glass would give less of a glare to make the data analysis a bit easier. One thing I could do to hinder or prevent myself from getting stuck is communicate with both my research mentor and my friend, the previous student who worked on this project. My research mentor would be able to give me some creative advice on coding to help diminish the glare from the tubes. The previous student would be able to give me some wisdom on small decisions in the project. This coming week, I will discuss with my research mentor about improving my MATLAB coding to reduce glare and ask for some advice from the previous student.

Some great things that have happened during my research are that I figured out how to use a milling machine to cut acrylic and was able to do this on my own. I was also able to make the solution for my experiment, silicate solution, on my own. This helped me start my project on the first day. There’s a picture of me holding my first test tube of a chemical garden that I will be experimenting with.  I am very proud of myself for this and look forward to what else I can do!