Day VIII: Minor Experimental Error

Bob had nothing to say at our staff meeting, and there were no doughnuts, so the meeting itself was nonexistent. We made plans to collect the people interested in the lecture at quarter to one, and dispersed to the labs. There, we attempted to calibrate the tracks from yesterday, only to discover that each and every one were utter failures. Jane's was full of noise and static, Erika's cameras wouldn't sit still, and both beginning and end calibration points were cut off mine. So, we were left with no choice but to redo all three trials.

We used a different eyetracker for the second set, and this one worked much better for us. The cameras stayed put and I got the best mobile track yet. Erika's was odd, in the sense that the calibration points were good but the actual gaze direction was very glitchy. Jane's still didn't work, for whatever reason.

We ran into a whole new set of problems when we tried to calibrate the tapes, though. Batteries failed, components were missing, and the display just didn't want to display clearly. After spending fifteen minutes just looking for a power cable, we managed to calibrate my trial. However, the camera refused to cooperate with Erika's tape; the display was far too bright for reasons unknown. We couldn't see any of the calibration points! So after a bit of trial and quite a bit more error, we decided to shut everything down and go to the seminar.

This week's seminar was pretty cool. Three different people presented different parts of a large-scale experiment on biodegradable plastic. First up was a girl who discussed the creation of the catalyst that would fuel the polymerization process. The second speaker detailed this process and how a starch component would be added to allow fungi to break it down. Finally, the third speaker outlined how it would be broken down and the impact it would have on the environment. This impact, as it turns out, is amazing. An object made of a starch-integrated polyethylene would degrade in a matter of weeks instead of centuries. This is why I want to be a chemist.

After we got back, the guys showed us a set of goggles that is designed to correct a lazy eye or 'squint'. However, to someone with normal vision they basically function as drunk goggles, throwing off our depth perception and shifting our vision to one side. We did a bunch of minor tests to see the effects. I've never had so much fun watching someone try to pick up a thumbtack. Anyways, they also talked about upside-down glasses (I'll leave you to figure out what they do). I really want to try those.

After that, we turned all the equipment back on and tried Erika's tape again. We futzed with everything for another twenty minutes before realizing that the second camera...wasn't connected. Oops. The screen normalized, and we got a fairly good track from Erika. So we calibrated, digitized, and coded both mine and Erika's. Jane's was still too noisy to be useful.

As we were working, John gave us some articles to look over, and told us potential projects for tomorrow. Seems that there's a problem that's 'holding back the floodgates' of assignments to give us. That sounds like a pretty double-edged sword to me, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow holds.