Preparing for Next Term

Two lasers are used in our setup, where one laser (the yag laser) powers the other (the dye laser).

As the end of term is fast approaching, I’ve been spending every available moment in the lab trying to finalise things before Christmas. Due to the nature of my project, the equipment we’re using takes a considerable amount of time to optimise for what we’re trying to achieve, and this isn’t always easy! However, now that almost every component has stopped working at some point I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of everything. We’ve succeeded in getting decent results with molecules where we know the spectra we’re trying to find, so the final part is to try breaking things apart by adding a discharge source. The difficulty in this is in finding the time between causing the spark and the molecule breaking apart, and trying to fix the source heating everything up and muddying the spectra! If we can get this done in the next two weeks, as soon as next term starts we can start trying to generate novel data.

My other main focus is, along with the rest of my year, trying to finish our group computing project in designing an automated monorail system using microcontrollers. After many hours of soldering, coding and trying to understand why things break, all the individual components are just about there, so now it’s all about bringing it all together and making sure it all works! Which I’m sure will be an easy process…