The day started off in the lab with Natalie, which was super cool. We first were in the lab I have been working in where she showed me an instrument used to measure degradation at different temperatures, and measure certain points such as full degradation among others. This machine can go up to 900 degrees Celsius, so it can measure many different temperatures. The machine is connected to a computer and has its own program so you program it to do different things in terms of temperature. So for the project she’s working on now, Natalie set it to increase 10 degrees C every minute until it gets to 800 degrees C. To start Natalie put the little platinum dish in the machine and tared it, and then added about 8 mg of the polymer we were testing. The machine then did its thing and we left it to run, since it takes around 2 hours. While it was running the program on the computer was collecting real time data so we could see the amount of the polymer degrading. Afterwards we went to another building to go into another lab with a different instrument she was going to show me how to use. This machine quantifies the amount of crystalline vs amorphous material that makes up the substance. She also explained to me how different amount of amorphous material can effect if the solid is brittle or soft, and how this affects is first order transition and the amount of energy that is needed/ released from this reaction. We also discussed other types of endo/exothermic reactions, which was interesting since I could see a concept I learned in chemistry this year come into play in the real world. After teaching me how to use this machine and getting to use a really cool massing device (that had 5 sig figs in mg!) we went back the other building and i got some time work on a mini project i got assigned and do some reading. I got settled in my very own office and started working on the project- to make a power point of pictures explaining how the device works, to show to focuses groups of women in Africa to get their opinions and suggestions. During this time I also did some additional reading on the project and looked at some other presentations. Afterwards it was time for lunch, so I went with Alice, Natalie, and Valeria (all on the project), and we talked about the project but also got to know each other better. Then after lunch I got to go in the lab again! This time I was working with Pafio. He taught me how they use a spectrophotometer, the measure the amount of drug in the buffer solutions. I got to pipette some buffers into the dish, put it in the sectrophotometer, analyze the data, and learn how they clean it. Afterwards I helped Pafio make some buffer solutions they would need for tomorrow. So i just put 100 ml of a solution with a pH of 7.4 that was made up of various chemicals with 900 ml of water that is even more pure than DI water!! I made about 8, 1 L bottles of solutions. Afterwards I got a little more time to work on my project. Overall I got to spend lots of time in the lab and learn about new instruments which i loved!! I can’t wait for tomorrow. 
