the eXternal mind

I was working on my SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) Research Poposal over the weekend, and the quick rundown of my proposed research is examining the effects of thermal annealing of porphyrin polymers in relation to their supercapacitors. To break it down, porphyrin is a carbon ring type structure with a few nitrogen atoms in the center of the rings to capture a metal iron. Examples of porphyrin include heme (the molecules that make up hemoglobin) that has an iron atom as the metal and chlorophyll which has a magnesium atom as the central metal. Now, supercapacitors are electrical devices that have both battery and traditional capacitors-like properties. But as the name implies, they can store over 10,000 times the charge than a normal capacitors. It has been shown in the past that these porphyrin polymers can act as supercapacitors. Since thermal annealing (a process where a substance is heated and slowly cooled) of organics usually result in more ordered samples with less defects, it is thought that this process might be a way to improve the capacitance of the porphyrin polymers. So essentially, my proposed research will be carrying out this experiment and then understand or maybe even suggest some of the theoretical basis behind my observations.

Let’s hope my proposal gets selected (”funded”)!

Inspired by other people I know posting in their blogs recently, I’ve decided to write some more things about the Caltech experience ™.

During Freshman orientation (the very first days) at Caltech, we students were at this Lake Arrowhead resort. I roomed with two other students, and one night we all had a discussion about Caltech, the house system, and generally, what we thought about the culture here. Surprisingly, all three of us shared the same sentiments and observations. For instance, we all wanted to join Avery House since it was the house that, in our opinion, promoted the most “free thinking” culture not bound by any “House Traditions”. Since Avery just became a house this year, we were eager to join it.

Rotation (house picks) comes along, and what do you know, all three of us were able to get into Avery! When room picks came around, one of the kids that I roomed with at the resort became my roomate at Avery too. The other student had some room at the other side of Avery.

During first term, I began to notice something strange. I would normally encounter the other Avery freshman, but I would never see this other student! (For my sake, let’s call him S from now on.) Well, once at this food party, I ran into him and asked him how things were going. He had this look of horror on his face and mumbled something. I was curious, and I had heard from someone that he wanted to transfer out of Caltech so I told him this. He replied: “Yeah, I’m planning to.” I pursued, “Any places that you’re considering?” He quickly blurted out, “I don’t know. Anywhere.” Me: “Anywhere?!” Him: “Yes, anywhere. Just as long as I get out of this place.” (He still had a look of horror on his face.) By now, I didn’t want to interrogate him. I figured he had his own reasons, and I could sympathize with him with the extremely difficult workload of Caltech. However, when I met him, we were talking about research, science, and other things, and he seemed to be really intelligent.

Second term comes around. After a few weeks, I suddenly remembered student S. I was walking by the hall one day and saw his roommate. I inquired about S and found out that he was gone. From what his roommate seemed to say, I think he may have just dropped out instead of opting for the normal process of transferring out.

Half way through last term, I also met a girl who was planning to transfer to Columbia.

Most recently, my roommate who is a genius, had to drop a course, EE 51, even though it was on Pass/Fail since it was taking him literally hours of work each day just to keep up with the course (not true anymore). He also decided to switch majors from Electrical Engineering to Applied Physics since he was no longer interested in EE. It is widely known here that the Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering majors here are the hardest majors. I noticed that a lot of seniors are biology or computer science majors possibly because they are “less time consuming”. For instance, I had a really tough time trying to find an upper class person majoring in Chemistry. So far, I only know of two…

Whew, after a long week, both Euge and I finalized and sent in our application to the Summer Founders Program! Yatta! We really excited about our cool idea (which we won’t talk about yet), and hope that it will be selected for funding. That would be awesome.