Perfecting technique

Thursday July 12, 2007

We attended a lecture given by Dr. T. Hashimoto, probably the #4 scientist in the world (honest!) wherein he compared the pattern formed as cellulose is polymerized by an enzyme in vitro to the pattern formed as matter erupts from a volcano. He is considering the idea that the similarity in these patterns may be obeying a fundamental law of physics as yet unexplored. So much of this lecture was far above my ablility to understand it, yet I didn't get totally lost. He went into detail about how the enzyme that forms cellulose in vitro aggregates into spheres, leaving furrows where the synthesis occurs and from which the cellulose emerges. The furrows in the spheres are not unlike the channels in the Earth's crust through which the magma erupts. The cellolose forms a branching, loosely interconnecting network as it moves away from the furrow, forming the cloudlike structures visible on the left side of the left image below. The right side of that same image is of an erupting volcano. The image is small, but you may be able to see some similarities in the two pictures.



Another section of Dr. Hashimoto's lecture concerned the various techniques he used to obtain his data and the images. A summary of these methods appears in the above slide on the right.

After the lecture, all three of us R.E.T.s spin coated several films each. We used the X-Ray Reflectometer to determine the thickness of two of them, and took the remaining films to the Hasbrouck physics building to practice cutting the films, floating the films, and putting the 0.2 ul drop of water in the center of the films. We followed yesterday's procedure of taking a low and high magnification picture of each water amount, increasing in 0.2ul increments until 1.4 ul was reached. We spent about six hours practicing. That was not enough!



We then brought our data back to the computer room and used ImageJ and Origin to calculate wrinkle length and count our wrinkles.