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Just thought I'd give an update real quick. Last week was a blur.
Last Sunday, one of the tenants there in Mojave who stores explosives for the local mines had one of their containers explode. So we were locked out of our test area most of the week.
Then Monday, Tiff ended up having a friend take her to the emergency room in Bakersfield. It turns out she had pancreatitis caused by one of her gall stones getting lodged down in the duct leading to her pancreas. So she ended up having two surgeries last week. One to remove the obstruction, and the second to remove her gall bladder. She's doing a lot better now, and came home on Friday night.
It was a good thing my little sister ended up coming down from Utah. She was able to help out with the boys, and I borrowed her laptop so I could write my thesis stuff while sitting there in the hospital. Honestly, if that hadn't happened, I don't think there's a chance in heck I could have finished things by the deadline. As it is, it's still going to be nuts next week, but at least I was able to get a lot done last week.
Chapters 1 & 2 are done, Chapter 4 is most of the way done, and Chapter 3 is done except for the experiment I'm going to run on Tuesday or Wednesday. By tomorrow night I should have Chapter 4 done, and Chapter 5 mostly done (also waiting on those experimental results). Chapter 6 and the abstract will have to wait for Wednesday or Thursday. I currently have about 100 pages of actual real content (not counting the University Pages at the front, or the Appendices at the back). After the defense in July, I'm going to see if I can submit the paper electronically, so I can provide a link for anyone here who's interested. I'm sure you're all just chomping at the bit to learn more about piezoelectric modulation of water jets...
Anyhow, I need to get to bed.
Last Sunday, one of the tenants there in Mojave who stores explosives for the local mines had one of their containers explode. So we were locked out of our test area most of the week.
Then Monday, Tiff ended up having a friend take her to the emergency room in Bakersfield. It turns out she had pancreatitis caused by one of her gall stones getting lodged down in the duct leading to her pancreas. So she ended up having two surgeries last week. One to remove the obstruction, and the second to remove her gall bladder. She's doing a lot better now, and came home on Friday night.
It was a good thing my little sister ended up coming down from Utah. She was able to help out with the boys, and I borrowed her laptop so I could write my thesis stuff while sitting there in the hospital. Honestly, if that hadn't happened, I don't think there's a chance in heck I could have finished things by the deadline. As it is, it's still going to be nuts next week, but at least I was able to get a lot done last week.
Chapters 1 & 2 are done, Chapter 4 is most of the way done, and Chapter 3 is done except for the experiment I'm going to run on Tuesday or Wednesday. By tomorrow night I should have Chapter 4 done, and Chapter 5 mostly done (also waiting on those experimental results). Chapter 6 and the abstract will have to wait for Wednesday or Thursday. I currently have about 100 pages of actual real content (not counting the University Pages at the front, or the Appendices at the back). After the defense in July, I'm going to see if I can submit the paper electronically, so I can provide a link for anyone here who's interested. I'm sure you're all just chomping at the bit to learn more about piezoelectric modulation of water jets...
Anyhow, I need to get to bed.
Labels: Thesis
posted by Jon Goff at 9:46 PM
5 Comments:
Pardon my ignorance of the work you've done so far, but it seems a bit strange that you're writing your paper, and still have experiments to do. :)
Seems like an environment ripe for 'fudging' the results of your experiments to fit your hypothesis.
I think you have enough intellectual integrity to avoid consciously making the results fit what you'd like to see; but I know from personal experience that it's really hard to avoid unconsciously interpreting things the way you'd *really* like to see them come out.
Personally, I started out with a Chemistry minor in college, and after being the last team out of the lab every time, and never getting the results that we were supposed to get in the experiments, I decided to switch away from that. (Besides, they never taught us cool and useful things like how to make explosives or do other combustion reactions.)
-- Carl.
Carl,
Pardon my ignorance of the work you've done so far, but it seems a bit strange that you're writing your paper, and still have experiments to do. :)
It's the final experiment, and I'm almost out of time. I'm writing up all the analytical models I made, and the experimental methodology, and then once the experiment has been run, I'll write up the analysis and conclusions. These are experiments that I've tried several times unsuccessfully in the past, and I'm hoping I've got things setup so they'll work this time. If not, I have a good idea why they won't work, so I should still be able to finish, just with negative results.
Seems like an environment ripe for 'fudging' the results of your experiments to fit your hypothesis.
Not really. From past experience, it'll either work well, or not at all. If by some luck I actually get results, but they don't match what my analytical models predicted, that would be a tough situation, but there's not a good way to fudge the models, even if I were so inclined. At that point, I'd merely pull some hair out, and then come up with some ideas of why the results didn't match up with things, and suggest them for future investigation.
Here, let me explain a bit further.
The experiments I'm running involve high speed strobe photography of the water jet, both without trying to pulse the jet, and with trying to pulse it. In the past, I've never been able to get a smooth enough unmodulated jet to be able to even proceed to the last experiment. While I have some ideas that should help, and having Harlock from XCOR helping me do the photography should help as well, I know theres a good chance I won't even get an opportunity to proceed to the final experiment.
Now, if I do manage to get that to work well enough, and I proceed to the final experiment and I don't get any pulsation in spite of the amplifier working properly....that would suck. Royally. If I only got a little bit of flow modulation, that might be ok--it'd just mean that there's some loss factor I wasn't factoring in appropriately, or some other term I've missed.
But the most likely outcome by far for the experiment is that the fluid jet will either be too chaotic, or the strobe pulse duration will be too long to see anything useful.
~Jon
Keep it up Jon - it's a test of character!
I remember my supervisor advising me that people who do PhDs either devote their lives to the subject, or get out and are never seen again (at least academically).
I have done no further work on Molecular Dynamics Simulation since finishing my PhD ;)
Stay strong, Jon! You're almost there! I hope Tiff gets better soon!
Wow. I'm glad Tiffany came through surgery OK. I'll tell Janine. Our prayers are with you.
Good luck on your paper.
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