Today, I enjoyed the lab visits more than the lectures. When thinking about the day without my notes to remind me, the only things that come to my mind are the instruments we saw in labs. There was when we looked through an SEM microscope.. Another was in the Yang lab where we saw how scientists are thinking about using light produced by algae to feed solar cells for energy. And then there was the sol gel that the Dunn lab made, though I wasn’t really sure what exactly that was for.
With the SEM microscope, we looked at someone’s hair and another’s peeling skin. We were able to focus on the sample in the microscope to around 10000 times. I was surprised when they said at the end that this microscope wasn’t the best one they had; they had another one on the floor above that could focus to an even greater extent.
Then there was the lab with the light producing algae. I really liked how a plant that cannot move by itself is able to produce light naturally while animals and humans who have total control over their bodies cannot. I also liked how they used the light; in an indirect way to keep away predators, the light the algae produces attract big fish to prey on the smaller fish that prey on the algae; this is a roundabout method but it does do what it is supposed to do. Using this unending supply natural light to feed the solar cells to produce our energy is an ingenious idea. With water and food for the huge amount of algae around the world, the solar cells around the world will be able to use all this light during the night, the day shift being the sun’s responsibility.
http://mse.iastate.edu/microscopy/whatsem.html
http://www.howstuffworks.com/solar-cell.htm
http://www.greenfuelsforecast.com/ArticleDetails.php?articleID=481
http://www.chemat.com/html/solgel.html