Historical Sites & Friday Morning Talks

Post lunch- April 23^th, 2010

Notes on Yesterday’s Field Trip

There’s lots of cover in this installment of my blog, many things have happened since I last wrote. Most vivid (and probably most interesting for the general reader) is our day trip to some historical sites. There could be lots to say here but I’ll let the pictures do the talking and just leave you with some brief notes.

We departed from the campus around 7:00 AM in an air conditioned coach, after picking up some more students, we drove out of the city center. My seat companion on this trip is a charming British woman named Rebecca , she’s the tall white girl in some of the pictures. It was refreshing to have someone to talk about politics, music, environmental issues... the list goes on... and it does, what a long journey!

We visited three historical sites, of which none I can name off the top of my head. All date around the 17^th century and are temples. It was rare for us to see foreign tourists at any of these sites, they’re mostly visited by the locals. Also to note is that whenever one emerges from our attention-grabbing tour bus (I am quite conspicuous in India) a group of hawkers surrounds and tries to sell their wares – maps, crafts, old coins, flutes , even wire puzzles. They are pushy but friendly and I didn’t feel threatened by them. In fact, it was quite enjoyable to talk with them about their things. But this got me into a little bit of trouble, they thought my interest meant they were going to make a sale. In one case and man was trying to sell me old coins, he kept following me around, even after I had left him at the gates to spend an hour looking at a temple (hawkers are not allowed inside the historical sites). There he was just as I exited, so I gave in and bought an old British coin off him.

Overall the day was a big adventure full of lots of pictures, conversations with locals and hot feet (you can’t wear shoes in the temples). It was amazing, but the 4 hour ride home was long and exhausting. I bought two figurines, a nandi (bull) and an elephant (for mom, shhhhh...) as well as a mortar and pestle. We returned around 11:30 and after a cold shower I quickly fell asleep.

Notes on This Mornings Talks

It’s been a stimulating morning. Anna Pairelli from Parma University in Italy. Spoke about spectroscopy and calculations for organic chromphores. A great speaker, I followed most of her talk. She focused on linking the experimental measurements (mostly UV absorbance and fluorescence) and the theory. One portion which stood out for me was her work with a molecule which contained a ferrocene sandwich linked to a chromophore. She modeled the polarized state by showing how the surrounding molecules in the crystal reduced the activation energy for the electron transfer.

Deepa Khushaani gave a nice talk about synthetic routes to TiO_2­ nanowires for use in dye sensitized organic solar cells. The basic process is the hydration of Ti Glycolate wires. She presented a series of PXRD patterns at different temperatures showing the formation of TiO₂ – To optimize this system you want to have as maximize conductivity and surface area (dye is attached to surface) – so singly crystal wires would be ideal.

Concluding – Jeremy Levy gave a great talk about making transistors with SrTiO₃ with AFM. The science was great, but even better was that he used some great animations and even passed around an “etch-a-sketch” toy at one point. The system he was working with is the interface of LaAlO₃ and SrTiO₃ – alone these phases are insulators, but when there is a thin layer of LaAlO₃ (3 unit cells I think) the interface between the phases becomes conductive. One last thing to note: He made analogy to the universe as a giant computational engine. (Past) <-->(future) : past and future can be thought of as “memory” states and the processor which changes them is the laws of physics. Mmm.... meta physical...

On to dinner. Expect another post about my exciting evening excursion into the village.