Day 15

Today we set up and conducted the knife edge experiment. We fixed a razor blade across our power meter and moved our beam of light across it, starting so that the razor blade blocked all of our light, then moving the beam so that more and more light fell on the sensor. Using this data we should be able to map a Gaussian curve, but unfortunately our signal to noise ratio (SNR) was too low, and so our signal was entirely drowned out by the noise. We'll have to rework the experiment and try again tomorrow.

I also went to a fascinating tech talk today from Professor Joel Kastner. He spoke about young, nearby stars which host planets, a section of the known class of stars 'T. Tauri.' These stars are "toddlers," incredibly young and in the early-to-mid stages of forming planets. Using a coronagraph, you can block out light from the host star and observe areas where gas giant planets are forming (very large ones only for now, the smallest being about two times the mass of Jupiter). By taking measurements of these planetary nesting grounds in every wavelength of light we can manage, we are able to identify certain important elements and compounds, such as hydrocarbons, which are some of the building blocks of life.