Clinic Updates and Fall FTX

If there was an awesome scale to measure the awesome-ness of clinic projects and their clinic teams ours would still be off-the-charts awesome. That's right, we're too awesome for even an imaginary awesome scale!

Seriously though, we've put a lot of hard work into the project so far and things are starting to pay off. Right now the project has us dabbling in every science from optics to photonics to environmental and atmospheric science to fluid dynamics to high-precision electronics and most things in between. It has been a steep challenge but very exciting and very rewarding. It's like someone said, "Hey, Nate Jones, here's a homework problem with no clear solution. You get to decide what to do and the world of professional engineers will tell you if its good enough. Are you up to the challenge?"

To which I of course responded a hearty, "YES."

Right now the team is heavy into proving that we can take optical transmission measurements, a fundamental function of our device. The idea is that if black carbon (the pollutant we're trying to measure) absorbs light, then we should be able to tell how much black carbon is present by how much light gets absorbed. Its a fairly straight-forward idea but there is a lot to work with. For one, building a detector isn't a trivial task. The photodiodes we are using (which generate a current from incident light) only produce a very small current and it takes some high gain amplification before we can read the signal. But of course with high gain comes high noise and it takes some precision electronics to be able to amplify the signal without all that noise. Ideally the op-amps we're using will have input offset currents on the order of a few femptoamperes (fA)! That's like saying, "This device is so sensitive it can measure the flow of a FEW HUNDRED ELECTRONS going into its terminals." Crazy. Also, the team is working hard on an inlet for our device which requires a lot of science we don't know yet. They are precise mechanical setups that filter out particulate matter down to the micrometer range and low to mid range commercial models cost anywhere from $500 to $900.

And Fall FTX was great; bad and great. Always a learning experience with this ROTC stuff, you know? Friday I didn't finish with all my work until about 6PM and at that point still needed to pack for the weekend. Mind you, we were meeting to leave Saturday morning around 4AM. So what did I do? Stupid me went to the Korean dinner my Korean language professor was having at her house and then stayed out till 12AM or so visiting with some friends I haven't seen in a while. Of course when I finally got back I stayed up until 4AM packing and getting ready so I didn't sleep at all before we left for the trip. I got to sleep on the bus ride up to our training site (about 2hrs away) but the rest of that day I still felt really tired.

And for me, I couldn't help but feel like somewhat of a failure. I mean, the rest of the seniors and I have worked our butts off the last few weeks to get this event ready and it was only going to get more hectic when we actually started the exercise. And where am I? About to pass out in the corner. I wasn't present to help out my friends and I felt like a burden most of the weekend. And why? Because I was stupid and selfish and thought that I could go see some friends of mine. That was the coward's way out and I paid for it. The right thing to do would have been to tell my friends I couldn't see them and gotten some sleep. Yeah I don't WANT to pass up on them but at that point I'm a leader making the decision and the sacrifice necessary for me to support my cadets. I didn't make that choice and it cost me. I suppose the one redeeming thing about it all is that I'm able to identify where I went wrong. God help me I hope I don't make that mistake again in the future.

But other than that the weekend went really well! Our freshmen and sophomores got a chance to have some really great training, which included everything from firing live 5.56 rounds on an M16 firing range, using the EST (Engagement Simulation Trainer, basically an M16 video game), practice what to do if a HMMWV rolls, complete an obstacle course, and practice day and night land navigation. It was a full weekend and thanks to the skill and resourcefulness of the seniors in our battalion, it all went off without any major hitches.

We finally got back this Monday morning. A few days left and then Thanksgiving...