The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observations of Andy Cole

I have been really busy recently getting a graduate school application ready. I got my least letter of recommendation arranged today. The application has to be in by the first, but I am hoping that they will not be too off put by my recommendations coming in after that. I called them last week to see if this would disqualify me, but they said so long as the app is in it shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully not, but I really don't have much hope left in me after talking to my principle investigator today. So about that...

Turns out she didn't know that I was a physics major. And for some odd reason, this is very important to me. I don't understand it, but I'm all upset about it. Seems that it might have been a fluke that I got to work in the Mahoney lab. Someone forgot to flag my research request with 'non ChemE', and I've been playing in the lab not knowing that I was illegitimate. So I went to work in lab today and the entire time I was thinking, "what the hell have I done! I'm not supposed to be here, I should be in a fricking physics lab right now." And to tell the truth I was just plain embarrassed, being around people I respect but still being that damned fool pretending to be a duck when he's obviously a toad.

Ha, well, I lied, it seems I do understand it after all. See, I have emotions... sometimes.

WOOT Go ANDY!

Some Photos

Here are some pictures of hydrogels. I took these pictures to show the difference between those that were rotated during polymerization and those that were not. In the pictures the grain you see is the fibrin, thats the material we were trying to get to NOT settle by rotating.

The hydrogels:

Gradient from no rotation

No Gradient! Notice that there is little fibrin on the outside edges!

Another gel with gradient from no rotation.

A well mixed sample from rotation. This one looks very promising. That blue you see towards the top is probably from the ink on the glass that I am imaging through