Another chapter, another story.

I simply can’t believe how fast time has passed. It seemed that only yesterday, I arrived aimlessly at Copenhagen airport, hurrying my steps to find the ticket station for train to Aarhus, the 2nd largest city in Denmark. I met my supervising professor there and time started to fly really fast. Today is the last day of my summer research here in  Denmark. To share what I’ve been doing for past few weeks, here’s a brief summary:

Week One
Explanation to the instrument that I am going to use, namely SEP1, an accelerator mass spectrometer. My prof explained it in depth and in a practical way. I did some simple, easy experiments to let myself adapted towards the environment. This week, I entered hospital for treatment for the first time in my life. I was riding my prof’s bicycle and I speeded up way too fast to catch the green man. Being unfortunate, I hit the roadside barrier and lost my balance, and fell straight with my chin on the asphalt. It bled like nobody’s business and my prof’s secretary panicked and quickly sent me to hospital for first aid. I received 2 stitches on my chin and several rashes on my palm and feet. Rough days afterwards; my rashes were freaking painful on their contact with water and my jaw movements were impaired to make sure the stitch wouldn’t take much damage.

Week Two
On week two, I was assigned to do a mass spectrum of simple peptides and their mass spectrum after electron capture. I was also introduced to the ion trap experiments where we could form ion bunch and did experiments with them.

Week Three
I was almost considered an operator now. I performed data acquisition on different fragments and produced fairly decent results. I was taught to do data analysis this week and I had to say these made my NUS lab report computation looked like complete rookie’s.

Week Four
I was nearly unemployed this week. Things were pretty relaxed during this period. I was assisting the polarity change of SEP1 and its ion source cleaning. It was so awesome to see the interior part of a vacuum chamber, though. Almost no experiments this week, I was occupied with more data analysis.

Week Five
My prof went to conference with the whole research group leaving me and a few behind. This week was even more relaxed than last week. I only conducted a few simple experiments and did some extreme analysis on them. Took most of my time watching Bleach though, a newfound addiction that I am quite regretting.

Week Six
Went to Sweden for some weekend traveling and after I came back, I was still nearly unemployed, but well, there’s some raw data left. So, I was merely plotting graphs and making some conclusive remarks.

Week Seven
I think this was the most productive week during the 2 month of research. Performed 4-5 experiments a day using the ion trap and lasers. This was the day where everything came into play and analysis had to be delivered right after experiments. I was so excited to see the absorption peak profile too. The feeling of looking at it was just too awesome. Nature invented gaussian curve, didn’t she? On this week, I was informed of a sad news too. Prof. Jean-Pierre Schermann, whom I met at SNU during my exchange and who introduced me to the current professor I am interacting with here, died unexpectedly. I was so shocked and plunged into a deep sad mood afterwards. He was a really great guy who patiently serve my questions with more questions. He introduced me to the quantum field theory, electrodynamics, Rabi frequency, vacuum fluctuations and even, Fermi Golden Rule. He will surely be missed. On the other hand, I gave presentation on the summary of what I’d done for past few weeks and it was well received. I received several compliments on the day after. That surely felt good.

Week Eight
Here I am currently! Writing final reports and this blog post. I just purchased a rail pass for Denmark-Germany yesterday and I am going to start my exit trip next week! I am so excited for the upcoming travel. I am going to explore German thoroughly along with her culture. Gonna be awesome. =)

peace
vixklen