I'm now officially clean room certified and ready for the experiments to begin! Since my grandma was worried because I said I was wearing a "clean (radiation) suit" - I thought I would clarify what exactly is a clean room. A clean room is an environment typically within an industrial or research institution setting designed to house a low level of particles such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles and chemical vapors.  People wear suits and protective equipment into the clean room to protect the nano-level equipment they are working on from being contaminated by human particles. On Thursday, I completed my clean room training and was able to enter the lab on Friday for wafer processing. 

On Thursday, the Nano/Bio Interface Center (NBIC) REU, Laboratory for Research on Structure of Matter (LRSM) REU, and other University of Pennsylvania sponsored REU students attended this week's lecture on the topic of Granular Physics. I thought the lecture was very interesting. Some of my other REU friends are especially looking forward to engaging in the upcoming lectures surrounding chemistry or biological topics.

Thursday night, my university - the University of Pittsburgh - was hosting a National Networking Day and one of their events was in Philadelphia. Leslie, and Michelle came with me to The Field House in Center City to eat and meet new people. 

While in Center City, I showed them a bit of downtown and we took some fun pictures. 

A member of my lab, David, baked his homemade pumpkin-nut bread recipe and shared the bread with our lab on Friday morning. It was absolutely delicious! For lunch that day, Adrien, Connie and I (REU students) tried the food truck "cuisine." Yay to Thai tea.

It finally became nice outside on Friday! After completing our day in the lab, Jenna and I went for a walk and - in honor of National Donut Day - went to Dunkin Donuts. On the way, we stopped in Urban Outfitters - I was shocked they were selling record players and records of today's music by artists such as Ed Sheeran. We explored Locust Walk on the Penn Campus. 

The adventures continue with a Saturday Mural Tour and visit from my mom and Holly.