"How was your weekend?" - "Oh, it was nice, I just rode to a lake around here and enjoyed the sunshine.... and yours?" - "Mh, mine was nice, too, I've been to California."
Eeer, I beg your pardon?!
That's just been a dialog between my supervisor and me, he was the one flying to California ;-) so I got my flight to Atlanta on the next weekend (I mean, where's the difference in taking a bus or an airplane?! I've never heard of CO2 and what's actually this "climate change" some people talk about... ?! ;-)).
A Picnic, or: Social Time #2 - 09-04-13
I'm sorry for the delay! A lot of things happened in a short time, for example the picnic of the ANL's Nanotechnology and Engineering Division. Fortunately I chose the eight weeks which include this annual social event which is attended by ... well, nearly everybody. To be honest the number of actual scientists was too easy to determine since most of them were excited about conferences coming up and, thus, they polished their presentations and had to get those through clearance - nothing will leave the ANL grounds digitally or in the "old-fashioned" printed style without official permission.
However, I joined a group of very nice secretaries and administration stuff tasting the whole palette of US-American deserts. When I felt that I had achieved the ability to roll away, luckily two colleagues started playing "beanball" and suddenly they'd got a third teammate. (I never thought that I'd fail so much in throwing a small bag into a hole just 4 m away! Mh, I have to admit that my combatants didn't score better... )
At the same time the fire alarm test in the childcare center next to the ANL park went off - that's just where we were hanging around so relaxed. It just reminded me of the fire simulation in a Boarding school I stayed at at about 5 o'clock in the morning, it was raining and we all stood with blankets in our pajamas outside. But it didn't rain, no, the annoying noise vanished and instead an interesting animal appeared:
However, I joined a group of very nice secretaries and administration stuff tasting the whole palette of US-American deserts. When I felt that I had achieved the ability to roll away, luckily two colleagues started playing "beanball" and suddenly they'd got a third teammate. (I never thought that I'd fail so much in throwing a small bag into a hole just 4 m away! Mh, I have to admit that my combatants didn't score better... )
At the same time the fire alarm test in the childcare center next to the ANL park went off - that's just where we were hanging around so relaxed. It just reminded me of the fire simulation in a Boarding school I stayed at at about 5 o'clock in the morning, it was raining and we all stood with blankets in our pajamas outside. But it didn't rain, no, the annoying noise vanished and instead an interesting animal appeared:
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| A Sunbather - Mantis Religiosa |
A Day Off - 09-01-13
How to call a National Holiday which is meant for rest? Rest Day? No way, it's Labor Day today, or in other words: Every 1st Monday in September becomes an official holiday to celebrate the achievements of workers (that's the international reason). In the US the holiday was established in 1887 mainly by the Central Labor Union (CLU) and the Knights of Labor (in the 1880s a big and vital labor organization).
The original proposition is a little ambiguous: One root goes to Canada, another one to a worker of the CLU. However, after the Pullman Strike in 1894 involved the death of many workers at hands of the U. S. military (amongst others), the Congress voted in union for a national holiday.
To conclude the history lesson: Why is the 1st May not honored? Back in 1886 a labor demonstration in favor of the eight-hours-week was bombed (to google: Haymarket affair). That's just been around the beginning of May, so there won't be any confusion with the memorial of the bombing and the Labor Day if a long weekend appears in September...
... in order to open the football season, of course! :-) If you might not be into football, many retailing stores will welcome you with open arms, since it's on of the greatest annual SALES-day (next to e. g. taken the Black Friday after Christmas). I really get the point of getting up at 2 am to do my Hollister shopping for half the usual prices...
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To sum up: I jaunted through the neighbourhood and spied out some nice places to go. Nevertheless, I just saw places, not people. Everybody seemed gone or caught by the TV and the Syria crisis which is 24h a day on the news. The former appears typical since a national flight is just like taking the train (which is even more complicated) and the latter... every detail is discussed, every feature, smile and movement in politics is analyzed. We just can hope that the well-considered, internationally appreciate steps are going to be made.
Just briefly, the vicinity:
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The original proposition is a little ambiguous: One root goes to Canada, another one to a worker of the CLU. However, after the Pullman Strike in 1894 involved the death of many workers at hands of the U. S. military (amongst others), the Congress voted in union for a national holiday.
To conclude the history lesson: Why is the 1st May not honored? Back in 1886 a labor demonstration in favor of the eight-hours-week was bombed (to google: Haymarket affair). That's just been around the beginning of May, so there won't be any confusion with the memorial of the bombing and the Labor Day if a long weekend appears in September...
... in order to open the football season, of course! :-) If you might not be into football, many retailing stores will welcome you with open arms, since it's on of the greatest annual SALES-day (next to e. g. taken the Black Friday after Christmas). I really get the point of getting up at 2 am to do my Hollister shopping for half the usual prices...
To sum up: I jaunted through the neighbourhood and spied out some nice places to go. Nevertheless, I just saw places, not people. Everybody seemed gone or caught by the TV and the Syria crisis which is 24h a day on the news. The former appears typical since a national flight is just like taking the train (which is even more complicated) and the latter... every detail is discussed, every feature, smile and movement in politics is analyzed. We just can hope that the well-considered, internationally appreciate steps are going to be made. Just briefly, the vicinity:
A Dependency - 08-31-13
It isn’t
hot, it’s the hottest place on earth, of course, we have to stick to our
superlative principle! And if it’s so warm, it has to be cold inside, but cold
is boring, so it’s now about 18°C in my office in the basement. My colleague
started bringing a blanket and I … got a cold.Never mind,
the weather’s warm, so at some point Physics deduces a thunderstorm. But just
any storm and lightning, again, would be normal. Thus, the lights went off and
an interesting sound started, immediately stopped again and everything was
switched back to the previous state.
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That’s been
the appetizer of an one-hour electric power outage. We sat in darkness with emergency
lights on the corridor and smartphones as torches. Slowly all the consequences
came to my mind: The fridge shut up, the dryer stopped and the water turned
cold. No Internet, no TV, no connection. That was funny, but just in
retrospective ;-) ... when everything worked again, taken the Internet as an exception.
Now, what
to do without my social life ;-) I went to Downer’s Grove downtown where I
tried to escape the rain. Haha, great idea… no chance:
I mean,
everything was great: I got the bus (bus station signs are totally superfluous,
by the way), found the Public Library and the post office and was not hijacked by anyone! But, still… there are more exciting places than the
“City Center” of a Chicago suburb. But probably I’m just fastidious, the trip
was exciting! :-)
And, did
you know, that mailmen have to scan a bar code at some buildings so the can
prove that they actually visited this place? Just another small part of supervision …
A Germanism - 08-30-13
There
might
have even been a proper battle call of the warriors against Anglicism (I
could imagine at least "Nationalsprachsschutzgesetzabkommen"),
manifested in many German classes and
books and warning monologues...
But now let’s see, how some German words enter the English language cosmos:
But now let’s see, how some German words enter the English language cosmos:
- There are the nearly normal ones: Kindergarten, Kindercare, Auto, autobahn, zeitgeist or even weltgeist, angst, gestalt, weltschmerz and many, many more, but especially interesting are:
- doppelgänger and poltergeist (even in Harry Potter!),
- schadenfreude (mh, strange that there has to be German word to describe the emotion ;-) According to some language theorists things just exit when there is an expression for them… ;-)), but there is also gemütlich to compensate the impression schadenfreude might leave - and don't forget about wanderlust,
- eigenvalue and eigenstates (great! Quantum physics rules),
- gedankenexperiment (that was explained by the author: it's an experiment in your thoughts; as far as I can remember it was Griffiths)
- ansatz (that’s some kind of problem, since I use the plural in my report: “there are several ansatzs (? or ansätze?! ) to solve the problem…”),
- rückwärts (my Serbian colleague told me, that you go either forwards with your car or backwards or rückwärts)
- … and last but not least, which actually made me laugh and I still have to smile when I read it: The infamous Aha-Erlebnis. I just bumped into it, when I read the last chapter of the book (that does not imply that I read the whole book or vice versa) where the author mentions his hope to satisfy everyone’s expectations with his book (De Graef, An Introduction to Transmission Electron Microscopy):
Even if the
exchange rate is not fair, the languages have started mixing and let’s hope
that there are sensible completion and we won’t end up with an unified Kauderwelsch.
A Bike Tour - #1 - 08-24-13
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The weather's amazing and my bike can't possibly stay at the wall in my room. Thus, I decided to get on the 10-miles-track in the Waterfall Glen County Forest Preserve around the ANL. Somehow, the 10 miles became 14, but I don't mind - I got a tiny little bit confused at one crossroad and why always take the path straight ahead?! So I took the other one and couldn't believe my mind when I looked on the map after some time and it just stated the position I had left about 30 min. ago.After all, I arrived at my accomodation safely :-) and with memories of a cute waterfall (which does not represent a great concurrence to the Niagara Falls) and of many nice, quiet moments in nature :-)
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A Nanoscientific Piece of Art - 08-23-13
"I've got a job for you." - Alright, that sounds interesting! "Could you reconstruct this pattern?"
Eeer, NO?!
Okay, yes, of course, finally I was able to manage that... With a super nice demo version of a mathematical software which was so kind that I could not safe the image in its construction mode. Thus, my laptop had cope with a hard time, but we survived. Furthermore we adjusted the length and width to 6.8 microns (pixel-scaled of course ;-)).
But... why?
The direct occasion were some people from Norhtwestern University of Chicago. They build the pattern, which is a Penrose tiling (quasicrystalline structure (1)) and ran a simulation of the pattern engraved in a magnetic nanomaterial to see the magnetic domains. That's just been a simulation - now here we are and we patterned the image yesterday on a permalloy membrane. The observation of the magnetic behaviour will take next Tuesday, I hope.
(1) Ha, the quasicrystalline structure has been the greatest fun factor during the construction of the flower: Quasicrystalline means that there is no "brief" mathematical description like the direct, not turned repition of a small pattern. Nevertheless, a formula exists, but I had more fun to pull out all the stops in geometrical construction. And - don't you immediately recognize the "golden ratio" between the main short and the main long strokes? ;-)
If you got interested (as I hope), there exists more information about my work here.
Eeer, NO?!
Okay, yes, of course, finally I was able to manage that... With a super nice demo version of a mathematical software which was so kind that I could not safe the image in its construction mode. Thus, my laptop had cope with a hard time, but we survived. Furthermore we adjusted the length and width to 6.8 microns (pixel-scaled of course ;-)).
But... why?
The direct occasion were some people from Norhtwestern University of Chicago. They build the pattern, which is a Penrose tiling (quasicrystalline structure (1)) and ran a simulation of the pattern engraved in a magnetic nanomaterial to see the magnetic domains. That's just been a simulation - now here we are and we patterned the image yesterday on a permalloy membrane. The observation of the magnetic behaviour will take next Tuesday, I hope.
(1) Ha, the quasicrystalline structure has been the greatest fun factor during the construction of the flower: Quasicrystalline means that there is no "brief" mathematical description like the direct, not turned repition of a small pattern. Nevertheless, a formula exists, but I had more fun to pull out all the stops in geometrical construction. And - don't you immediately recognize the "golden ratio" between the main short and the main long strokes? ;-)
If you got interested (as I hope), there exists more information about my work here.
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