Junlan's Blog: Microfluidics at Princeton
Hey everyone, my name is Junlan Lu and I have the great luck to be interning at Princeton University under Professor Jason Puchalla this summer. I am going to be working there from 8AM to about 5PM every single day until mid-August in the lovely Jadwin hall (pictured above). I am making this blog to give you readers a better idea of what research is actually like. Hopefully by doing so, I will have effectively encouraged you to seek your own research internships.
There are 3 other interns working in the lab including an undergraduate from Rutgers University and two other high school students. I will be mainly working with piezoelectric devices to drive fluid through microfluidic chambers and using imaging techniques to document the process.
This is a piezoelectric motor that I will be familiarizing myself with in the upcoming weeks. A piezoelectric device is just something that deforms when an electric current is passed through it. Conversely, when it is deformed, it will create an electric current. Basically once it's hooked up to a computer (power supply), the two yellow discs will spin by exciting the piezo elements on the stator in a pattern that generates a traveling wave. This wave makes the rotor rotate.
So that's a basic idea of the stuff I'm working with. Until next time!
-Junlan
First 5 days in Review: July 8 2015
Hello everyone, this is my second post. So from seeing the others' blogs, I realized I didn't give a great introduction in my first blog post, so in this post, I'll explain more about the environment that I'm in and some of the stuff that I do.
First of all, if you didn't know know this enough, Princeton is rich. Jadwin Hall is like a scientist's paradise (Frick chemistry lab right next door is actually a bit nicer I must admit). It has a student shop where anyone can go in and use their expensive equipment. It has a large, very large supply room that has almost everything ranging from resistors to O-rings to bread boards to your general office supplies. Thankfully, the office supplies are free to those in the physics department (aka me temporarily) so I sometimes grab some extra stuff for my own personal use. In the rare occasion that the department doesn't have what I need, I can just email the purchasing office what I need and they will get it to me. They obviously take convenience and expedience very seriously here.
So the above is a picture of my desk. It's really messy. There's my computer, there's the lab's computer which I use to run the program that controls the piezoelectric motor. There's also a microscope and a bunch of other junk. I do not use my desk too much because most of the time, I'm in the microfluidics lab doing stuff (more to come about my project in the future). I really enjoy the way my professor, Dr. Puchalla mentors me. He gives me an overview of what I have to do, and then leaves me to my own devices. It's my job to learn the program, to operate the machinery, and to master the methods. He left for vacation this Tuesday, so today was the full day I was by myself. It was both a rose and a thorn. It was the former because I can screw around (in a good way as in playing with the lab equipment) as much as I want without much supervision. It's the latter because I no longer have the guidance that I need since I'm only 5 days into the internship.
More to come on the stuff that I do. Tune in next time!
-Junlan