Hamburgers and diffraction (butt wait, there's more!)

Phew! It's been a busy week or so since I last posted. I've had two farewell parties, appeared in one yukata show, spent an evening with Da-kyum and Ignace, and had my first typhoon experience. Today's my last day at SPring-8, so I had to say goodbye to everyone as well. On the one hand, I'm very sad to be leaving all my new friends, but on the other, I'm also excited to be coming home to my beloved Madison. (Who ever thought that I'd enjoy anything in the Midwest? Next thing I know, I'll be saying that I like the South and enjoy the hurricanes.)

Once again, I've put off writing for far too long and I'll have to break it up into chunks. Today will be the

Hamburger Party!!

The first farewell party was at Ignace's apartment. I don't think I've properly introduced him yet:


He's a French scientist working here on the Taiwan beamline and is fluent in everyday Japanese as well as English. Freaking international people with ridiculous amounts talent. As you can see, he can also play guitar. However, without any suggestions for songs, he started making up his own. The lyrics went something like this:

Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca
She's from Wisconsum,
She made brownies-um
Rebecca!

There were similar songs for the Kobayashis (Sachiko-san and Nami-san. Completely unrelated.)

Anyway, I made an American style meal for the Japanese class peeps. This consisted of hamburgers (me), french fries (Ingace), and brownies (me). Other additions included Bangladeshi rice (Hakim) and prochutto (how do you spell that, anyway? seems like there should be an i somewhere) and camembert. This is one of the only cheeses readily available in Japan. For some reason they only like the soft ones, like Kraft cheddar slices and mozzerella. I love the serving style. Forget about sporks- chopsticks really are the universal utensil.

Anyway (#2), the hamburgers were a great success. I actually had to teach everyone how to make a hamburger - how to put it on the bun, add condiments and veggies...the whole bit. It was a very strange experience. Also, ground beef in Japan isn't ground beef. It's ground pork and beef, since our good ol'American cow (well, probably Australian, actually) is too expensive. Luckily, Ignace had accidentally bought a couple beef only patties, so I got to eat too.

In another typically Japanese incident, I had no idea who most of the people were. I mean, I'd seen all but one of them before, but I'd completely forgotten their names, so I had to use English to get their attention. Calling someone "you" in Japanese is a little rude, so I either had to look them in the eye, talk to everyone at once, or just shut up. Anyway (#3), I'd started the patties too soon, so mid-way I stopped and sat down to talk to everybody. Mystery-san arrived and started cooking my hamburgers. Apparently he's quite the chef. Not only did he cook the hamburgers perfectly, but he'd brought his own knife. He's the Japanese guy in the center. Way to go, Mystery-san!


Here's everybody. I knew Da-kyum, Ignace, Sachiko-san, and Nami-san. The rest were new. Aren't we cute? As an added bonus, this picture also serves as incentive for me to go on a serious diet as soon as I get back to Wisconsin.


On a side note, Ignace's apartment is in the complex that I'd live in if I get a post-doc at SPring-8. It's two/three rooms (one room is a sink and washing machine), small bathroom, and a living room/bedroom. It has no central heat and poor air conditioning. Apparently Japanese buildings aren't usually heated despite sub-freezing temperatures every single year.

Woo yay.

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Science update of the day: X-ray Microdiffraction

This is the technique that I've already used at Argonne. X-ray diffraction in any form tells you what the atomic structure of the material is. The only thing that's special about microdiffraction is that rather than getting information about a large area of a particular sample, you focus the beam down to a very small spot (tens of nanometers - 10^-9 meters. This is 1000 times smaller than a human hair.) This means that you only get the structural information about that particular little area.

Why the heck would you do that? Excellent question, Johnny.

In some thin films (this is exactly what it sounds like - a very thin layer of something on a much thicker material so that you can pick it up) the film gets stretched (technical term is strained.) If it's too strained, then it starts breaking into little pieces, or domains. If these pieces are tilted in different directions, or have different structures, then you can see that with x-ray diffraction.

Why do you care about this? Susie, good job. That's another great question. 10 participation points.

If there are too many different domains, then sometimes the properties of the film start deteriorating. For instance, in a silicon transistor (the basic building block of your computer), if the quality of the silicon's structure (i.e. number of domains and imperfections in the crystal) gets to be too crappy, then electrons can't travel through the material as well. This means the transistor doesn't work as well, creates lots of heat, requires more power, etc., etc.

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And on that rather geeky note, I'm going to bed. More on recent activities as soon as I have internet access in Tokyo, although pictures may not be guaranteed, so here's a preview.

Typhoon Barbeque

The only picture of my butt that I will ever approve of.