pedo mellon a minno

Back in the Lab

whew... I'm back in the lab(s) again... happily completing my LAST PHASE of research- mechanical characterization of the music wires. I'm looking at creep characteristics, ultimate tensile stress, young's modulus and microstructure under SEM and Optical microscopes. While its the last bit, its pretty complicated, cos its many small, short and different tests that have to be done (in a short span of time).

This complicates things cos I've gotta shuttle between three labs (advanced manufacturing, biomechanics, and materials lab), try to juggle time and bookings and lab technicians and equipment, and while running one test (eg. creep which takes two hours) I will be in another lab polishing up my samples (eventually with diamond paste!! woohoo... haha... that's what happens to diamond dust- 0.05microns which is 1/20000th of a millimeter). So lots of running around, and waiting.

Free gaps are spent sorting out data. I wonder how research could have gotten on before Excel came about. See, I'm happily juggling 10Mb+ of data points with each file- that easily works out to 80million pieces of info (?) per file... and i've got over a thousand data files data to crunch through (they're happily backed up in excess of 16CDroms, 8DATs-1.3GBeach and i'm using 4 active zip disks). I just need to make sense of all those numbers! Thank God for computers and software engineers.

Oh, and I'm wondering if I should top off my research with an actual Listening Test- recorded samples (already prepared) of the treated and untreated guitar strings (on a Taylor, no less... solid sitka spruce top+sapele mahogany sides) will be played to test subjects. They will be required to fill out a semantic survey test, where they would be asked to describe/evaluate the sound of each sample. It may just be really interesting to see if there is concensus with the general human perception on the effect of the treatment. It may even be more fun if I split up the sample group into trained musicians and non-musicians. All this, of course, if I still have some time left over. Makes an interesting study- acousticians do this sort of tests all the time. You can sign up as a test candidate if you want! haha... just drop me a mail or something. A small sample size is required.

Speaking of mail, i've just got my v own gmail account haha... Now you can all send me HUGE files.