Jerangle Bound, Circuitously

Digital devices, including cameras, were on the list of prohibited items for Inward Bound. Disposable or film would have been ok, but it also seemed unlikely that in an ultra running race there would be time or appreciation for "Smile!" moments. But oh, if I'd had one, I could show you pictures of mist rising off a clear river in the first blue notes of dawn, isolated by miles and miles of Australian bush; sun hitting the tops of eucalyptus forest-covered mountains (the variety of bird screeches, much more grating than the calls I'm used to in the US, would have to be imagined), across a valley from the small range we were crossing; a strange moment oddly reminiscent of the opening credits of Sound of Music, with green rolling hills of pasture land opening suddenly, darker mountains in the distance to either side, and our lanky Scottish navigator considering an alpaca, their hair colors and eye level perfectly matched.

Let's just say that while IB could be called an adventure race, mine tilted drastically toward "adventure" more than "race." Such is an alternate way of saying that because of ambiguities regarding resticted areas surrounding the Division 4 drop, things went terribly wrong for the div 4 B&G squad. After about 12 hours and 75 kilometers of running, hiking, and bush-bashing, we arrived at endpoint. Needless to say, it was frustrating to have trained for essentially a full-on running event and end up having to walk so much (while trying to navigate off trails and once the distance had so exceeded expectations), but I really couldn't have asked for more of an outdoor experience. Too bad IB is only at Australian National; I'd do it again in a heartbeat. While I don't have pictures from the event, here's one of the whole team in our snazzy red shirts (the backs have a silly quote from Troy):I should clarify the title-- the endpoint ended up being in the small town of Jerangle. I just Google mapped it and discovered it's near the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, which explains why at the 2 am drop point I was wearing a fleece and still shivering.
Anyway, now it's on to class work, lab work (highlights from my first day without supervision: snapping the head of a screw, being shown the "power" button when I didn't understand why the cryostat hadn't been cooling for an hour, becoming frustrated over laser alignment before being kindly told that the component coming off the sample wouldn't be very visible and that I'd been chasing irrelevant reflections), and getting ready for the next adventure-- New Zealand in less than a week! Cheers!

Various Sundries

I'm not sure what a post written directly after last Wednesday night would have looked like; B&G's final big training (and team-deciding) event, 'Mock Drop,' felt like one of the craziest and/or physically strenuous things I've ever done. The drop was hard-- very few navigator's could pinpoint where we were from the start, and ours was not one of them so we ended up unnescessarily crossing a river valley and running a roller coaster of a rocky maintenance road before doing a bit of bush bashing and river wading (definitely the best part) to get back on track. We were dropped at 10:30 p.m. and got to endpoint at 3:15 a.m. (and we weren't the last ones back!). All that being said, here's the actual Inward Bound update: The final squads were posted. I'm running in division 4, which was a huge surprise and means the drop will probably be 40 to 50 km from endpoint. Wish me luck!

Usually a fireworks display is associated with some sort of fair, holiday, concert, or other event. On Saturday night, though, Canberra had fireworks for the sake of fireworks. "Skyfire" is an annual event where seemingly everyone comes out-- families and Uni students with equal enthusiasm-- to picnic and visit on the shores of the lake before ahh-ing over the showers of curling golden sparks, requisite cutesy hearts and smiley faces (and cubes...?), and traditional blue and red bursts.

For this, and other things, I'm really beginning to see Canberra's beauty. It's not an exciting, bustling city like Melbourne or San Francisco per say, but it's wonderful how there is the full convenience of a city, from things like shopping needs to social events like Skyfire or the Symphony in the Park and places to go, surrounded by mountains, pastureland and forest. It was so peaceful last Friday to slowly ride along the bike path next to the lake, first through meadows, then past the dam into rolling green hills, Black Mountain and other darker, gum tree-covered peaks behind my right shoulder, an equestrian park next to one stretch of path, and a mix of Friday evening strollers, seasoned bike commuters, and kitted cyclists finishing their day with a ride as my companions on the path. Having a city built "in the middle of nowhere" isn't such a bad thing.

Hope everyone at home is staying well or having speedy recoveries and enjoying spring (break, if applicable).

Geek out

Content Warning: The following is possibly very boring to approx. 90% of suspected reader base. Probably higher.

Have you heard of a lock-in amplifier? It's one that is connected to both an input signal that is being supplied in intervals at some frequency and the output signal so that it "knows" to amplify just the signal you're after, being referenced to the proper frequency and phase. I remembered the professor in my circuits class last semester describing that set-up as a good way to pick up your signal and cut down noise. I pictured the front end being electronically turned on and off really quickly. When your input signal is a laser beam, though, there is a simpler way--you can use a chopper. What's a chopper? It looks like a fan, or one of those annoying wheels at miniature golf courses, and sits spinning in front of the laser-- blocking the beam, letting it through, blocking the beam, letting it through, at the required frequency. People are so clever!

My research supervisor explained somewhat apologetically that the set-up for each run of photoluminescence analyses will take a long time since everyone moves all the pieces around for their different experiments. I don't think he realized that lining up laser beams with mirrors and lenses, funneling liquid nitrogen into mini dewars, and setting parameters on equipment that actually use tricky principles I'd thus far only seen on physics exam papers isn't exactly a drag.

In case anyone was annoyed by the rambling about what I find interesting at the research lab without a more formal description on the project/task (unlikely, but hey), the plan is to characterize various samples of III-V quantum dots (grown by someone else in the group) to see how different growth methods affect their physical and optical properties (hence the AFM and PL trainings). They're shooting for a specific band gap/emission wavelength. Wikipedia can tell you more accurately and succintly about quantum dots than I could if you're interested, but apparently they've been around since the 80's. Who knew?

Public holidays

Canberra is bordered by some beautiful mountains called the Brindabillas, running 20 km's in the pouring rain is bound to make a group a bit giddy, and the original Starry Night is amazingly rich and textured. In other words, it was a three day weekend in the ACT (hoorah for Canberra Day), and I split the time off between bushwalking in Tidbinbilla Nature Preserve, getting caught on what felt like a pretty epic IB training run, and waiting out the 50 minute queue to get into the Masterpieces from Paris exhibit at the National Gallery of Australia (...and doing course work, too, of course).

The exhibit was worth the wait. There were six rooms of Post Impressionist paintings ordinarily in the Musée d’Orsay. I thought some of the most interesting aspects were how the order of pieces really showed transitions between styles and choices of subjects through the different phases of Post Impressionism and how pointillist pieces change appearance with distance. It's practically what computers and printers do today, just with more creativity and I'm sure many more hours of labor! As mentioned above, though, despite the huge range of artists and styles, the Van Gogh wall really stole the show. Man, that guy knew how to do blue.

Transitioning back into the school week has been pretty fast-paced; lectures are charging ahead pretty quickly, and I had a first substansive meeting with my research advisor today. It was pretty enjoyable. My head is still swimming a bit with substrate/MOCVD quantum dot growth and things like semiconductor strain, but I don't need to figure those out any time soon; today was about learning to set up and run the Atomic Force Macroscopy machine without damaging the tiny tip and then differentiate between the funny dots that mean you damaged your tip and are getting fake results and the funny dots that are actual quantum dots. Next week: photoluminesence.

Mountain biking report: Mt. Majura is pretty fun. I will not be doing any full gap jumps, but the gullies keep you on your toes (...or pedals? Other parts if they don't go too well.) It's mostly pine forest that reminds me of Tahoe, except with kangaroos.

And the home of the brave

"You can thank the Americans for that."
"Why American can't work in SI units, I don't know."
"And once again the Americans have moved in and changed all the units on us!"
Turns out my engineering professor didn't think the Poise (1 g/cm*s) and Stoke (1 cm^2/s) were the best units for measuring dynamic and kinematic viscosity. It was a good lecture, though, the second time in one day I found myself listening to an explanation of boundary layers. The first was in the physics class on fluids and was full of mathematical approximations related to dimensional and scaling analysis. This one was much more pictorial and eventually led into a warning against falling into a tub of tomato sauce.

The U.S. pops up in the intellectual property class, too. I find it pretty interesting that, compared to the theoretical legal studies classes I've taken at Berkeley where examples are drawn solely from U.S. cases unless 'international' is explicitly in the title, the lecturer for the laws class I'm taking here moves freely between cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, Australian High Court, and Canadian appeals courts, and asks international students if they are aware of ways in which their home governments have been addressing the relevant issues. It's a small example but an example nonetheless of what seems to be a trend for ANU academics (particularly in the social sciences) to keep an eye to global conditions rather than maintain an inward focus.

Anyhow, this afternoon I was feeling undecided about what to do next so made the sensible decision and wound* my way over to Bruce Ridge for a bit of mountain biking amid the eucalyptus. Bruce Ridge isn't huge or incredibly technical, but it's a pleasant place to be in general and has enough log piles to remind me that I never actually mastered the whole picking-up-your-front-wheel thing. Ah well. I appreciated the trail builders' vision on this part:

* Due to an excellent memory for directions, "wind" remains the operative word! No worries, though-- the way home is always just to point towards Telstra Tower as B&G sits near the base of Black Mountain Road.

Inward Bound

Some kangaroos hanging out around the base of Black Mountain in the evening. A somewhat modern carillon gifted by the queen of England playing at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. A conglomeration of high school students in crew uniforms, waiting for their division while their parents cheer from shaded tents. The dam that forms one end of Lake Burley Griffin below hills planted evenly with pines for logging. My rationale for aiming to partake in Inward Bound was that it would be an amazing opportunity to really take in the Australian bush, but the training runs in just the past week have been the best way to experience scenes from Canberra farther afoot than the Uni or downtown (when I remember to look up from the heels in front of me).

Backing up, Inward Bound is an event unique to the ANU. As mentioned earlier, competitions are between residential colleges; the signs recruiting for IB around Burton and Garran say things like "Help bring the trophy home!" and "Winners are grinners!" or provide the "Top Ten Reasons To Do IB," both serious and humorous components. Competitors are, in teams of four, blindfolded and dropped off somewhere in the bush. To explain exactly what this means, at the first meeting, Liam, the head trainer (who has done 7 IB's), held up a map of the ACT and pointed out that there was Canberra... and surrounding it nothing but an expanse of green or yellow-indicated "national parks." There is one end point-- a set of map coordinates that all teams are racing towards. Teams in the shortest division will have been dropped 25-35 km from the end point, with distances increasing from there. One of the big tricks is for the navigator to figure out where the team's been dropped (it will be dark, sometime between 1 and 5 am) and the right direction to run. Needless to say, I didn't sign up for nav training.

I have no idea if I'll feel up to running 30 km in less than a month (during the hot 15k Saturday run I was quite skeptical), or even if I do, if I will make it into one of the four person squads. Regardless, I'll continue to enjoy sunsets in Canberra, slightly breathless, trying to keep my feet at tempo with a pack of other runners.