Project Progress and a Hike in the Alps

Hello all! It is time for a new weekly blog post. Today was a pretty great week for me here.

For the research, it started off a little shakey, because Shobhit, Felipe and I thought that we knew what we were supposed to do, but when Shobhit actually started making the plots, they weren't what we wanted them to be nor needed them to be, in order to obtain useful results. We met with Archana Sharma in the afternoon to discuss it. She told Felipe and I to use Garfield++ to make some plots of drift velocity, longitudinal and transverse diffusion, and Lorentz angles for various electric and magnetic fields each in our own gas mixtures. She told me to use Argon:Isobutane 95:5 (which is the percentage of the total gas mixture for each gas).

After the meeting, it seemed rather pointless for me to make these plots, because I'm sure someone else had done it before, but Felipe and I did it anyway, since we wanted to do something and that was all we knew how to do at the moment. We used an example Garfield++ file (which is the Garfield simulation software I was talking about before, but it is written in the programming language C++) and then adjusted the gas mixtures, electric fields ranges over which the simulation would run, the magnetic fields, and the angle between them. The different angle effects the motion of the electrons which were simulated, because a charge moving through a magnetic field experiences a magnetic force proportional to its speed and the sine of the angle between the motion and magnetic field. So, the electric field force will be somewhat counteracted by the magnetic field, causing the electrons not to drift exactly along the electric field, but rather at some angle to the electric field (and also the plates which have the applied voltage). This is called the Lorentz angle.

The program itself simulates the drift of many electrons in order to calculate an average drift velocity, which depends on the forces applied and the medium, in this case Argon:Isobutane 95:5. It has to track the motion of each electron through space for the entire distance and therefore requires many many calculations and a lot of time. For several of the simulations I ran, I had to leave my computer on and running the simulations all through the night. One of the simulations required about 36 hours (though I divided it up by letting each terminal send a specific part of the job to the server). In order to record all of the data that appeared in the terminal and was then pushed off the top of the window by new incoming results, I wrote a .txt file with all of the information that I could then go through later to sift out the useful results. After inputting this information into Excel, I created several useful graphs in the 3 days of work. It finally feels like I have done something useful!

Aside from the simulations and analysis, I also went to the beach on Friday during the day (while it was still hot and sunny). Don't worry, I stilly made up for the skipped work by working until 8:30 pm or so after I got back. I just thought that since I wasn't really working with anyone that I might as well make use of the beautiful sunny day!

On Saturday, Zack and both Alexs and I went for a long hike in the Alps. In short, it was awesome, and here are some pictures to document our journey! First, we woke up really early and left here at 6:25 am to catch the tram to the Airport. We had set up a rental car from Hertz and we picked it up at 7am. There was a little trouble, since aparently you have to have credit card in order to rent it (a debit card doesn't work). So, the person who had organized everything with the car couldn't actually rent it, so Zack ended up renting it and driving. We had tried to use the GPS and print off maps, but there were so many clear road signs that we were ablt to make it to the hiking place about an hour away with no trouble.

 Here is my first picture from the road. It was interesting to ride in France, but not too much different from the US. Definitely more traffic circles though.

We had looked up the directions to hike Mont Buet, which is near to Mont Blanc and has a good view of it, and we eventually found a route that we liked and that we thought would work. On our way to the trailhead, we passed a hiking area, but I was fairly sure that the trailhead we wanted was further, but since we didn't have a GPS, I wasn't sure at all. We only had a map with the large towns labelled along with the road. We drove a little ways further, but then didn't see what I thought we should, so we decided to go back to the trail we saw. Here are some pictures of the beginning of the trail. It started out with about 1.5 miles of switch backs. Then, there was another 1.5 miles of flatter straight trails up to the lake pictured 3 pictures below.

 We knew that we were heading to Lac Blanc, which was a lake, so we though this one might be it, until we read the sign. We then headed up the ladders and up a steep trail until we reached the actual lake of final destination, Lac Blanc.

Next to the lake is a hotel/ restaurant that people can stay in when they go on big hikes. These types of huts are scattered throughout the Alps as resting places for people going on longer hikes.

I tried to get artsy with this picture... I realized that I think I want to take some photography classes or at least learn more about it. It would be nice to take better pictures. We arrived at the lake, but we were still hoping that Mont Buet was just above, and accessible, so we started to climb the ridge near Lac Blanc. It was pretty steep in quite a few places and required us to use our hands also. It was really fun.

 Here is a picture with me and a glacier behing me.

 Zack Siegel, Me, Alex Fragapane, and Alex Sherman at the top of one of the hills.

 This perspective in this picture does not do justice to how terrifying this actually was. There was just a little rock ledge down there and after that, it was probably a 150 foot drop off. It was on the side of a cliff practically. Anyway, since you can't see how terrifying this was, I don't think I will submit it for the Chipotle challenge.

 Here is me being like the beginning of lion king with my shirt, but it is too far away that you can't really see me or the shirt well. It was pretty high up though.

 This just gives an idea of the terrain that we were climbing on. Eventually we got to where we couldn't avoid the snow, so we had to cross it, since staying on the rocks would mean crossing an 8 or 10 foot ravine leading to the cliffs mentioned before on the left.

Crossing the snow was pretty scary, since it was quite slick. If you slipped, you could slide all the way down further into the bowl, where it would be less steep, but there were some large rocks that you also might run into after you gained speed.

 Another view of the terrain.

We eventually decied to slide down the snow. It was really fun. Kinda like skiing except you couldn't steer very well and it was mostly just trying not to lose your balance.

 There is me making a snow angel. Again, definitely too far away to see the shirt, but I thought it was still a cool picture.

 They told me to lay there and do a model pose, but I didn't know what to do, which is what I am motioning in this picture. "What do I do"

We thought it would be cool to make an AU for me to sit in for a picture, so we all tried to carve it out. It took some time though, because it was really slippery still and we had to make a special effort to avoid sliding and ruining the letters. 
Here is the best version of the photo of me in the AU. I think this will be one of the top contenders for the Chipotle. Everyone here is invested in making the best picture possible, because I said I would share my chipotle with them if I win.

 I decided to take some more pictures on the way down because the lighting was better, so here are a couple more of the same scenery.

 We saw another one of those wild goat things a lot closer than before. We also saw a giant hare type thing and a really big marmot relative.

 Our car is down on that little D shape more than 1000 feet below. Just for some numbers, the total hike was about 8.5 miles and we gained almost 3700 feet of elevation. The steepest grade was 67% according to google earth, though I'm pretty sure up towards the top when we were bouldering, it was more than that.

 Here, I only have my white shirt on, because Alex S reasoned with me that there was no way that this picture would beat all of my other AU ones, so there wasn't really a point of putting it on.

 After the hike, we were all quite hungry so we went to a Microbrewery in Chamonix France. They had a good deal for a hamburger and pint of beer for only 10 Euros. The Hamburger was so big and juicy and good. I had a stout, which kinda tasted like coffee, but was really cold, so it was bearable. We also got some onion rings and waffle fries for 6.5 and 5 Euros respectively. It was so much of a better deal than Geneva!

After all this, we were exhausted and didn't want to to much, so we just watched Taken 2 in one of the lounges. I have pretty bad sun burn, so am sore from that, and some other peoples muscles are sore, so we could tell that it must have been a good hike!