Friday, March 2, 2001

I'm getting over my cold--seemed to be a pretty bad cold. Went from the lungs to my head, and that wasn't very nice. But for future reference, and from personal experience, take NyQuil to sleep at night (when you have a bad cold, of course!). Not the syrup (yuk!) but the gelcaps. They take effect in about 20 minutes, and they sure do work well. Not too bad effects in the morning, but far better than waking up after having very little sleep.

I had my Physics exam last night. They threw in some problems to throw off the masses, and I think it worked. The mean score estimate is about 65(!) out of a possible 100 points. The TA's stayed up the entire night grading so the students could get them back in section the following morning (today). I don't see why--probably just introduces more chances for grading error. I'll be getting my exam back on Tuesday since I don't have a Friday section. We got solution sheets in lecture today, and from the looks of it I think I did pretty well.

Tonight I've got my second overnight shift. There's a huge party going on off-campus, but they've gotta come home some time right? We'll see how it goes. Needless to say.. no NyQuil tonight. I'd be a happy, but not too responsive attendant.

Today in my CD Player exploratorium (self-serve lab) I got to play with a diode laser with different polarizers. Sounds pretty simple, I'm sure, to other college folk involved in electronics, but it's a nice change from the complicated D/A and A/D conversion things we've been doing in previous weeks. In case you're curious, the reason we're looking into this is because the plastic (polycarbonate) that makes up the majority of a CD is actually a very specific material that has an index of refraction of 1.55. Essentially, this is important such that the pits on the metal data surface have the most effective impact on the laser light refraction. Thus, imperfections in angles and laser focus will have a minimal impact on the data that is read from the CD.

If you haven't checked out the Random Word in a while, there are some new ones! Until next time,

Aaron

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