Experimenting doing nothing

Since I not able to do anything at the moment, I figured that I might as well tell you about what it is that I am actually doing (or supposed to do) at RMIT in Melbourne.

My research involves focussing an ion beam (beam of accelerated charged particles) by means of a very small hole, in general referred to as an aperture. Without the use of such an aperture the lower limit of a focussed beam spot is in the order of 500 nanometre. A nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre; by comparison a hair is typically 50 micrometers in diameter, which is one two hundredth of a millimetre. In other words, a very very very tiny spot. But we want to go to even smaller beam spots in order to make even smaller structures, up till structures of just a few atoms, or even single atoms implanted in some material.

The reason for creating such small structures is to develop a new kind of computer, mostly referred to as quantum computer. I won’t go into detail here about how such a device is supposed to work, but I want to stress that the accurate control of structures and individual atoms on a very small scale is essential.

Designing the aperture is a challenge on its own, as it is quite difficult to manufacture a suitable ‘hole’. As basis I use a silicon cantilever (think of it as a very small silicon diving board) connected to some holder. With the use of a different kind of focussed ion beam (using heavier particles) I can drill holes and structures in the cantilever (see picture). During drilling I discovered that the cantilever is not as thick as I thought it would be, 3 micrometre in stead of the expected 15. As the ions that I’m using in the experiment need at least 7 micrometre of silicon to be stopped, this cantilever is useless for experiments.

Nevertheless I decided to have a better look at the drilled cantilever in a machine called a scanning electron microscope (SEM). I wanted to see if the holes that I made in the cantilever were all the way through. Although it is not common to image cantilevers in a SEM, it has been done before. There was even a specially modified mounting probe available for this purpose. The mounting of the cantilever on the probe was successful (dropping it would quite possibly made the cantilever breaking off). Unfortunately the imaging itself was less successful and when we tried to get the probe out the SEM again, it appeared to be stuck. To summarize a long story: during the inserting of the probe the cantilever was smacked off the probe because with the holder of the cantilever stuck onto it, the probe was just a bit to high to enter the SEM properly. Conclusion: one day of work down the drain.

So you see, not everything is running smoothly at the moment.. I haven’t been able to conduct any experiments up till now, because of the reasons mentioned above. Hopefully I can drill some new thicker cantilevers tomorrow and conduct the first experiments later this week. I’ll keep you posted!

Home sweet home

So after a strange week in the hostel I finally found a permanent residence in Footscray.
Footscray has a bit of a reputation because of problems with drug addicts in the past. That is why most people responded a bit weird when I told them I had found a place to stay in Footscray.

I guess Footscray has changed the last few years, as I haven’t had any encounter with a drug addict so far and don’t particularly feel unsafe there. I guess what people dislike most is the fact that the suburb is totally deserted in the middle of the night, in contrast to the city and some other suburbs. But just because you don’t encounter any other living soul, there is nothing / no one to be afraid of.

Paul, 26 years young, has just moved to Melbourne from Sydney. He has been living with his parents in Sydney, but wanted to live on his own. Renting a house in Sydney is unaffordable, so he decided to move to Melbourne. Through his cousin he found a job at an internet provider.

At first I didn’t know what to think of Paul, but as I got to know him better I realized that I was very lucky to have found such a great roommate. He is a really nice guy with a great sense of humor. A part of him is clearly still a kid, which makes him very impulsive and creative. The photo here illustrates best what I mean; here you see him inflating a 5 by 5 meter wide and 2 meter high air castle that he bought for his little nephews and nieces inside his room.

That’s another funny aspect of our house; as there are only two bedrooms, Paul uses the garage as his bedroom. I must admit that it definitely could be an extra room, if you appropriately seal garage door by means of a fake wall. For the moment it is quit a cold space, because a lot of heat dissipates through the garage door in spite of the curtain that Paul hung in front of it.

But also if you’re in for a serious conversation about whatever, Paul is your guy. Even though he is a convinced Christian, he has an open mind, doesn’t try to convert you and is always willing to listen to your story. He is fascinated by physics, black holes in particular and loves sci-fi, especially Star Trek.

My other roommate is Michael, 22 years old and already has been married and divorced. He is ‘from the country’, which means that he speaks real genuine Australian. This has proved to be a kind of barrier in our conversations, as I frequently have to ask him to repeat what he said, before giving up trying to understand him. Luckily most of the times Paul is there to translate.

Nightmare

At the last moment I had decided to stay another night in the hostel. Jacqueline thought it would be ridiculous to pay for that night as she had a key of the room, so she thought up a plan to make it possible to spend the night in the hostel for free.

The basic idea was that she would let me into the hostel and room. The only thing we hadn’t thought about is how I was supposed to get out of the hostel the next day without being noticed, but we could worry about that later.

Jacqueline had promised some friends from the hostel to meet them in the bar and since I didn’t feel like going to bed yet, I joined her there. The bar goes with the hostel, but has a separate entrance. Most of the times you'll find a lot of male drunken backpackers there, hunting the few women that there are in the bar.

This night wasn’t different. Some guy, almost too drunk to stand without gripping onto something, obviously was interested in Jacqueline. I don’t think it was because of his problem to maintain his balance that he was touching Jacqueline all the time and soon it was starting to get very annoying.

When he was gone for a few rare seconds I asked Jacqueline if she wasn’t bothered by it all. He had asked her to have dinner with him and regrettably she had accepted, ensuring him that it was only going to be dinner and that she wasn’t interested in anything else. As always she was just too polite to actually tell the guy to leave. I explained her that the best thing was to use straight, clear language and tried to teach her short sentences like “fuck off” or “get lost”, but it was too much unlike her to use that kind of language.

Later that evening we were playing a game of pool against two older gentlemen, who seemed a bit lost. Mr. Irritating even managed, together with one of his friends, to deviously take over from our opponents, leaving them stupefied about the sudden switch. It was obvious that he was jealous of me, because I was talking to Jacqueline all the time and now even playing a game of pool with her.

My allergic reaction was now really reaching a level that was almost unbearable. My hands were getting all itchy and I could feel my muscles tightening. The easiest way to deal with it would have been to tell Mr. I-am-too-good-to-be-true how pathetic he was, but I chose for the more sensible option to go to bed. Sooner or later Jacqueline had to deal with the situation herself, so there was no point in getting involved myself.

Part one of the plan worked fine. Jacqueline piloted me into the hostel and into our room and then went back to the bar. She was still hoping for some nice danceable Latin music, otherwise she wouldn’t get rid of the alcohol in her blood and was likely to get drunk.

One hour later I was woken up by a reasonable tipsy Jacqueline, sitting on the floor next to my bed and illuminating my face with the light from her mobile phone. I told her to get some sleep and after 15 minutes she crawled in her bed.

Nearly 10 minutes later the silence was interrupted by a loud bang. For a moment I thought Jacqueline had fallen out of bed, but as she lay in a lower bed that couldn’t have made such a racket. It became clear that another guy in our room, David, had too much to drink and had fallen out of his upper(!) bed. When he regained consciousness he tried to find his way to the bathroom, but being totally disorientated and wasted ended up at Grams bed (remember Gram?), almost peeing all over him.

Gram, who of course also had been waken up by the loud bang, started yelling at him, calling him an idiot amongst other less kindly things. Eventually David found his way to the door, which he wisely left ajar since he wasn’t carrying a key. But somehow Gram always gets upset when the door is left open, and pissed ;-) as he already was, got out of bed and slammed the door.

With no key to get in David started banging on the door, first gently, but after a couple of minutes of no response, he was nearly breaking down the door. In the meantime a bad humored Ben had waken up and luckily went to the door to make the banging stop. It was about to get all quiet again in our room, but not before Ben en Gram had called David all sorts of names because of his asocial behavior.

I didn’t really get all the other things that happened that night, but as I was staying illegally in the hostel that night, I figured it was best to be as invisible as possible.
Jacqueline told me the next morning (after just a few effective hours of sleep) that there was some leak in the wall which had wet whole Ben’s bed. Apparently even the manager (!) had come to have a look at it in the middle of the night. Luckily he hadn’t noticed me.

Now there was only one challenge, to get out of the hostel without arousing suspicion. We came up with the idea that I had just come this morning to pick up my luggage which I left in Jacqueline’s room. That wouldn’t even be lying, it only wasn’t the whole truth.
Escaping from the hostel turned out to be not much of a challenge. The girl at the reception immediately bought my story and I was on my way to my new home.