Black Bag Experiments at PSI

Today is my first work-related posting. The whole reason I'm even here is for taking part in some chamber studies at PSI (the Paul Scherrer Institut) located north of Zurich, more precisely between and north of Baden and Brugg. I'm here sampling with the High Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer, and if that's not a mouth full then I don't know what is. This is a picture of Megan and Rami just under the black bag from which we did a dark experiment (no lights = no photoinduced reactions) today. Most people were at ToFWerk today, the makers of our power supply so it was a relatively quiet and uncrowded day, proving to be very nice indeed.

Sadly, our efforts were not rewarded in that our sampling did not replicate the experiment we attempted to repeat. Just as a brief note: we were attempting to replicate a published experiment with increased instrumentation in order to gain increased insight to the chemical mechanisms of the reaction. Four compounds were to be atomized into the black bag and sampled over a period of 2 hours, whereupon polymers were to form. However, our sample solution was so concentrated and of a higher pH that it seems we did not have the same solution. Of course this was realized after the completion of one experiment with no change of the particles in the bag over 2 hours.

One hypothesis was that we had a polymer solution before we even started. VTDMA (Volatility Tandem Differential Mobility Analyzer, which to make it simple determines the percentage of the particles remaining after heating, a.k.a. the non-volatile fraction) readings were of much higher percentages than expected. Upon further investigation this was proved to be true for the original solution and later low concentration versions. Therefore, further replications of the experiment were aborted. However, this was all determined at about 7:30 pm.

Although our efforts were unfruitful, I think the crew left behind enjoyed all efforts throughout the day. For me, it was the first time I was the sole operator of the HR-ToF AMS during a field campaign, and not only was it empowering, exciting and exhilarating, it definitely gave me confidence in my ability to run the instrument and with high precision. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to show my talents and sample in all 3 modes (W, V, and negative ions), but that doesn't matter. I'm just glad to have finally been in this situation. I don't think it will help get me more credibility as an educated user, but it was great to finally be in on the action. Usually there are too many people around to be involved in everything and know why each decision is being made, along with the fine details of how the actual experiments are being executed. I think everyone deserves an individual chance such as this in order to actually understand what we're trying to do and participate in the decisions and data collection, especially if they are involved in any way with the future data analysis of the work. 

Candy candy candy!

Ok yes, we've all known about Teuscher, which BTW never responded to my request for a tour, for a long time. Anyway, the crazy thing is that their best seller, the champagne truffle made with the Dom, isn't quite so unique afterall. That is, of course, if you're in Switzerland.

We went to Lucerne (French) or Luzern (German) yesterday. The town is known for it's vast amount of tourists, and even during the off-season, such as now, there were still obvious outsiders with their cameras out, ourselves, of course, included. Despite my upset stomach at the time, I still managed to buy a good bit of chocolate.

Finally addressing the picture, there seemed to be a Chocolatery on virtually every corner, with no complaints from me, but definitely a bit shocking, especially when you hear they all make their own chocolates from scratch! I wondered where they even did that, as most seemed quite small and mainly centered around showing off their artful craftsmanship. I would like to point out that most of the chocolatiers did seem to be women. Coincidence, I think not.

Amidst all the chocolate shops, each one seemed to have standard versions of truffles, champagne being everpresent. The other astonishing theme being the amazingly smoothe chocolate centers and rather soft exteriors, much unlike the American Godiva truffles that always seem to be harder than rocks with quite unchocolatey and ungratifying centers. Taking nothing away from Teuscher, as they still have a truffle of high quality, even by Swiss standards, but it does seem that their style is quite ordinary in this here country of chocolate and cheese. So I might have missed Halloween, but you'll get no complaints from me this year! 

Night in Baden

Today we took the last (legal) train from PSI at 8:09. Ed, Pete, and I stopped for Falafel downtown before heading back to the hotel to crash. We ate our sandwiches outside, so I took the opportunity to take a rather bad picture looking out over the city. The lights up on the mountain in the distance (top right) really is what it looks like, a castle. Supposedly it takes about 4 hours to hike up there so I doubt we'll get to do that, but it looks pretty, and we're fantacizing about spending Sunday in Lucerne. We just have to check to make sure things are actually open on Sunday, as it seems shops are closed on Sundays and museums on Mondays, so hopefully there should be something.

Tomorrow night we're going to Zurich again for another traditional Swiss meal. Everyone knows Fondue, but no one seems to know Raclette. It's basically a big block of cheese (something like Brie) that they heat up on a block under lights and scrape off the molten cheese that you then put over an assortment of vegetables (mainly potato from what I understand) and possibly from fruit, although I have to mention I haven't seen much of this food group here except in liquid form. Anyway, Peter and I had our taste of Raclette (without knowing it until it was on my plate) just this afternoon at the PSI cafeteria. It was pretty tasty, the only real negative (IMOP) being the fact most of the items to be doused in cheese were pickled. It was still pretty good, as who doesn't like molten cheese?, and definitely fun. We'll see how tomorrow night is, but I would bet it should be better.

Now all we have to do is try not to spend all the day hours at PSI working tomorrow. Peter and I totally want to go to Zurich and would like to do that before going to the dinner, but we'll see how that goes. 

Hotel La Cappella

So not much to report today, other than the fact that I 've turned from a virtual vegetarian into a raging carnivore! I just can't help it. The meat selections are usually the tastiest meals here, like the daily post-doc meal at PSI, so deemed as it's the more expensive menu choice. Today was pork tenderloin in a great sauce, as always, noodles, and the potato-like vegetable them seem to have a lot of here.

Here's a picture of my hotel room at a business style hotel. I feel I have to show off my queen size bed as this is supposedly unheard of in Europe, especially for a single room. Everyone here in the hotel is quite nice, and the expensive restaurant downstairs is quite good also. However, today was the first full day for Jose and Doug, so let's just say the craziness has begun and leave it at that.

Old Town Baden

Today is a National Swiss Holiday. Our only guess is All Saints' Day, but we're not sure. Instead of travelling to PSI we have a meeting in Old Town Baden. Pete and I walked around there on Sunday, so this is a picture overlooking the Limmat River after we visited the Langmatt Foundation, which is a small museum in Baden with some big name artists. They had one Monet, one Cassatt, one Degas, quite a few Renoir, some Pissarro, and several Cezanne. Most of the first floor is Swiss and other random pieces from all over the world. We kind of went through that part quickly.

Today we have a large group meeting to decide what experiments to do for the next week and a half. It's in one of the hotels in Old Town, right by the thermal baths, which could be good today as it's quite wet outside. So we've had our cheese and croissant breakfast, now it's time to work up some data to present this afternoon. Today is kind of a teaser in that we don't have to go to work, but we do have to give a presentation on our results from the past three experiments. Well, in any way, it's nice to have a day off, it being kind of real or not.