Interview!

A quick note, I just received notice that BYU-Idaho wishes to interview me for the open Chemistry professor position. Let's just say, I'm flippin' excited.

Ups and Downs

Sorry it has been a while since either of us has written anything. For those who couldn't quite follow Kristina's post, we're really busy. She's got this organic chemistry lab class where she's supposed to be there from 9 to 6, and in her remaining time write lab reports and prepare procedures for what's next and order chemicals and everything. It's more difficult and time demanding than anything I ever had to do. And while she's doing that, I'm writing my dissertation. And somewhere in there someone is supposed to go grocery shopping and wash dishes and do laundry. Honestly, we do as little of that as possible. We've kind of gotten on a routine of only washing dishes once a week.

Along with all of that, and because of it, we've had a lot of ups and downs over the past few months. Sometimes it can flip really fast too. I go back and forth between thinking all my data is worthless and I'm betting the rest of my life on shoddy conclusions (yesterday), and then realizing I know what's going on and my data is actually pretty good (today). Let me demonstrate.

This graph got me down:

It made for a hard day. On the right axis is what I measured (FOTOS) for iso-pentane concentrations divided by what was measured at the observatory at Hohenpeißenberg (MOHp) as a function of the measured concentration. It basically shows that the values I measured for iso-pentane underestimate the actual value by up to 80%. That's not good. Especially since iso-pentane is one of the three compounds I measured in Finland on which my big chapter is based. It is times like these when I ask myself what I'm doing with my life. Then I remembered what I had done wrong. (Non-science types can now skip to the next picture.) I had the timing of my mass spec ion grouping such that I switched ion groups in the middle of this peak. Not on purpose of course, but because iso-pentane has signal at ions in both groups, the total ion signal looked okay, but the individual mass-to-charge signals contained clipped peaks. I thought about how I could prove that, then realized that if I plot as a function of peak retention time, it should be obvious. The ion grouping switch occurred at 3.0 minutes, so those points near 3.0 minutes would be more clipped, progressing upward until the peak is fully within the ion group window. I made that plot today.

This graph got me back up:

See how beautiful it is. That is such an amazing correlation I had to run around showing everyone. It shows that I can explain the discrepancy, and better yet, that the changes I made before going to Finland should result in highly reliable data. All is once again right in the world.

So lots of ups and downs, but it looks like we'll both end on an up.

I'm getting excited about becoming a teacher again. A couple weeks back, I gave the lesson at the home evening activity for the young single adults. (I'm the member of the Bishopric assigned to the YSAs). I decided to talk about how the rules, laws and commandments we chose to follow shape the kind of person we are. To demonstrate that, I explained how in quantum mechanics, the difference between a particle-in-a-box and a harmonic oscillator is not related to the nature of the particle (the kinetic energy term for both is the same), but rather the boundaries within which it exists (the potential energy term, which varies based on the type of potential well in which the particle is contained). Surprisingly, only one person seemed to follow my reasoning, but she was so excited about the concept that it made it worth it. (Don't worry, in the end I switched to scripture references, and then most everyone got my point.) Yeah, I'm excited to be a teacher. I haven't heard anything from BYU-Idaho yet, and plan to write a follow-up email this weekend if I don't hear from them by then.

Well, that's probably enough for now. Class dismissed. Please leave your quizzes on my desk and remember to read chapter four, sections one and two before our next lesson on Monday.