Tuesday, July 15, 2014

(almost) Tardy Tuesday

Well, today was perhaps the longest day I've had so far.

First, I left home at 8:10 (my own fault), expecting to show up just on time for the prompt 8:45 meeting.

There was a huge traffic jam [it was almost as dramatic as I make it sound] and after 15 minutes, I had just gotten about a mile or so away from home... Luckily, later on it was much, much better, and I arrived at 8:45! Another lucky thing was that the man in charge of the meeting showed up at around 8:47, so I had not appeared to be late :)

Yay!

After that, I continued to work on the TAFKAA installation. It seems that it might be a permissions problem, preventing me from modifying the contents in one of the directories. I learned a little bit about using the command line to change said permissions, and I also learned something new about permissions themselves! (computer stuff)

After that, I started working on the title and abstract for the presentation I'm going to give about my internship in the end. This can be found at the bottom of this blog post. This is where I formally tell the reader what I actually do during my internship, and what the current goal of our lab is.

After eating lunch at Crossroads, three fellow interns and I went and visited each other's labs and had a lot of fun! We got to see the work we were doing, and we also got to see how we spend down time (if we have any) in the labs. In one of my fellow intern's labs, they have multiple fancy-looking monitors, along with a humongous 55" Samsung Smart TV (no, this is not product placement). We, evidently, became very jealous of this TV... At least we got to play with it! We can always go and visit each other at the different labs, so one day I might go in and take advantage of that TV :D

After I got back, I continued working on the TAFKAA software, but I focused on my Title and Abstract, seeing as it's due by tomorrow morning. (I tend to procrastinate and do things last minute...)

At 5PM, the interns, as well as others, were invited to "Dinner and A Movie!" We were fed garbage plates, which were delicious, and then treated to "Tim's Vermeer," a movie/documentary about how Vermeer might have used optics for a few [six?] of his paintings. Tim researched this and tested his hypothesis by being Vermeer, and doing what he [is hypothesized to have done] to paint said paintings. That's right, Tim actually built and painted one of Vermeer's famous pieces, "The Music Lesson." A lot of time and work was spent on this project. A lot.

After this enticing movie (yes, I recommend it), I got home at around 7:15 PM, making it the longest day ever. But don't get me wrong, today was one of the most fun days so far. 

Alright, that's pretty much all for today! Below is the prophesied title and abstract.

Remote Sensing of Granular Materials
Modeling, Calibration, and Validation using GRIT

Current remote sensing models of light matter interactions with granular materials
have proved to be not fully reliable.  For example, several of said models have 
significant errors, especially when the scatter is strong and anisotropic.  However 
these models can be useful, as Hapke’s model has shown itself as a good starting 
point for our own models.  The recently developed Goniometer at the Rochester 
Institute of Technology (GRIT) will be used to produce more suitable models 
for study.  The GRIT has been designed to capture the bidirectional reflectance 
distribution function (BRDF) of the various samples it is subjected to.  Analysis 
of these BRDF’s will show how they change with density, composition, grain size 
distribution, and moisture content of the material.  Also, this will be used alongside 
hyper-spectral imaging to assist in validation of the resulting data.  This data will go 
on to create final, satisfactory models for light-matter interactions within various 
granular materials.

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