Here is a synopsis of my weekend:
- We went to go see Batman: The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker was highly entertaining. His off-the-wall maniacal character very much controlled the course of the story, which was thoroughly thrilling. This movie very much lived up to its own hype
- I got to play basketball for the first time in a while. It was nice to get out there again
- I got to take a walk over to the sea cliffs to watch the sunset. I found out that La Jolla Shores, the beach that I had taken a 10 minute bus-ride to get to is not the closest beach to campus, but instead this beach by the cliffs is. It is a short walking distance from Eleanor Roosevelt College where I'm staying, and is very beautiful.
- Went to a skate-boarding exhibition at Muir college, which included a free baseball cap, dvd, magazine, and stickers. I also got to try out some of the longboards there. Longboards are a recent craze; they are a sturdier, more stable type of skateboard with thicker wheels meant for cruising and less acrobatics.
- After the skating I got to go to the "UTC Mall", my first experience at an outdoor Westfield mall. It was similar to Santana Row in San Jose, but not quite as upscale and without the multi-story buildings
- Today (Monday) our boundaries were expanded so that we can now explore the majority of the campus on our free time. A large portion of the COSMO-ers took the opportunity to eat lunch at the the Price Center, the hub of the UCSD campus. I meanwhile went back to our normally designated cafeteria to get a free lunch in order to save my money
- I'm looking forward to going to the San Diego Zoo this weekend. Though I went there at least 6 years ago, I expect that many new exhibits have since been brought into the park.
In Scientific curriculum news:
- In our lectures we are moving closer yet to true nano-photonics. We've already covered ray optics, lenses, waves and their properties, fiber optics, polarization and irradiance, etc. Each of these are essential to understanding nano-photonics. Today we learned about the anatomy of the eye and about how certain photodiode devices can detect light and alter electrical current
- My group project is progressing along slowly but surely. We are struggling to put together our computer program in order to rotate our diffractive grating and have our photodector take light intensity readings in unison. We spent some time today calibrating our set up using a laser that we leveled ourselves using irises, or disklike devices that shrink to a pinhole like how an iris of an eye would contract around the pupil of an eye. We must use a 4F (four focal lengths) method of focusing the light, so we worked on this today too.
No comments:
Post a Comment