Thursday August 9, 2007

We are determined to complete the wrinkling experiments today, or at least I am. We crunch some more data in the early morning, then make and take films to Hasbrouck to complete the 0.12% surfactant experiments. We float the films prior to adding the surfactant, and I manage to release a TON of tiny bubbles into the dish which decide to congregate under Dave's floated membrane. My bad. My membrane and solution are fine, however, and we are able to get some good data. We took Jaingshui to lunch at Rafters, and that was a great time. We presented him with a gift certificate to his favorite restaurant as a token of our gratitude for his time and patience. We try to also treat him to lunch, but he has a fit, so we let him cover the tip.

After lunch, I make three more films, and Efren and Dave each make two. We return to Hasbrouck and Dave and I get data for 0.12%. I then float two films in a dish containing 160 ml of water and proceed to add 40 ml of 5% surfactant (8 transfers with a 5 ml syringe). The membranes go CRAZY on the surface, flying around the dish; I am adding the surfactant slowly but you would think I was adding it with a fire hose at full blast. One of the two membranes collides with the needle, destroying that film. The data I get from the 1% is the best ever, and the film is clean. Efren is also able to get data for a 1% solution, even though a few teeny bubbles appear under his membrane.


We return to Conte and crunch our data. The graphs look pretty good! We will complete our data reduction tomorrow.