Japan : ２０１４年４月１１−１４日

April 11th:

Friday was a great day. I got to the lab at 9 unsure what to expect from our meeting. I had decided vaguely what I wanted to research. But considering I don't know too much about what has already been done in the field of powder metallurgy, I wasn't able to give a perfectly concise research goal. The meeting began around 10, and it turned out to be a presentation session in Professor Kondoh's lab. Each research student came up and gave a presentation on their last month of research, the Japanese presented in Japanese and the Chinese exchange students spoke in Chinglish. As if materials science is not already difficult enough. Try learning it in another language... Professor Kondoh would interrupt the presentation from time to time and force his students to explain to me in English what they were saying. With my broken Japanese and their broken English, we found an understandable compromise between our mother tongues, enough so to at least get our points across. The meeting lasted all day, from 10 AM- 4 PM with a lunch break for an hour.
After the last presentation, I went back to the computer room to read more research articles. About half an hour later, I was called in to discuss my research topic with Professor Kondoh. It was just me, the Prof, and Imai senpai a 35 year old guy who seems to have loads of experience in the lab. I presented my list of topics I had conjured up, and explained the ones I had the most interest in. I told him I want to make aircraft parts for Boeing civil aircraft. So we narrowed it down to Aluminum, Titanium, and Magnesium. We agreed on Titanium because Magnesium has poor corrosive properties, and Aluminum has a higher material potential than Titanium. This is something I still don't fully understand, but Titanium has a higher specific strength than Aluminum, so this makes it more ideal for aircraft parts. Obviously there are already a lot of Titanium/Ti alloy aircraft parts, but the field of titanium composites is relatively unexplored. The Prof. himself did research on carbon nanotube dispersion in pure titanium and Titanium alloys, both which yielded strong materials, but there was some small bugs to be fixed out. To put it into as summarized words as possible, my research topic is:
Pure Titanium and Titanium alloys dispersed with Vapor Grown Carbon Fibers (VGCN) consolidated by spark plasma sintering (SPS) methods.
It is extremely interesting to me.

At 5:30, I went out with all the lab members and staff. We went to わらいお好み焼き, where they offered a huge full course Osaka style meal with all you can drink for 1 and a half hours. I sat with the professor for most of the night and got to know him a little bit more. He is basically a badass. He gets called in by the US military to work on bulletproof materials and tank armors.. Among many other awesome jobs. And he seems pretty well off because he just gave us a 10,000 JPY to spend on whatever we wanted after dinner. We decided to go this other Indian restaurant to have some drinks. Here is a picture of the end of the night.

Awesome group of guys. Very intelligent, helpful and a great time to hang out with. By the way the lighting definitely makes me look whiter than I am.

After dinner, I biked home with the crew. The night was pretty fantastic, and for the first time here, I caught a strong whiff of fresh grass and trees. The campus area is pretty green and dark at night. Japan is definitely a special place.

April 12th:

Saturday, I got up early to visit Kyoto with the International Student Club at Osaka University. I'm just gonna post a bunch of pictures and caption the happenings.

Train cockpit.

Felt bad cause our whole group of 40 foreigners stopped to take pictures of these two. I guess that's half the point to them dressing up.

GIANT

Postin by some sakura trees with lunch.

Heian Jingu Shrine

Courtyard. Pretty classic.

Towers on the side of the courtyard.

The garden by the shrine. This was pretty serene. Wish I woulda seen this at night with the lights.

The Sakura are on the wane. The leaves are a nice color as well though.

One more close up because it is so pretty.

That pine tree sakura contrast is pretty primetime.

The oldest train in Japan. Really random that they put this in the Heian Shrine garden... lol.

Stone spotted with sakura leaves.

Cool engravings.

Write your wish on a pink paper, and hang it on the branches.

Big.

Thanks for ruining the shot taxi car..

Group shot with some pretty kimono girls. They were just sight seeing from Tokyo and wanted to get into the Kyoto feel.

Some badasses. They helped bring Japan out of isolationism apparently.

Guess they are still alive...

Cool narrow street.

Turn 180 degrees from the last shot and this is what you see.

Geishas and an awkward lady.

Another cool street with shops on both sides.

Crowded, but majestic nonetheless.

Buddhist temple. I took some time to pray for the 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami victims.

Big bell.

Springtime in Kyoto

That green is so vivid and brilliant. I got lost in it.

Lover's shrine.

Kyoto: The old and the new... and the pollution...

This thing was tiny. If you go up 4 pictures, this the red tower you see in that picture..

Some lovely flowers next to it though.

Some rocks with faces and aprons.

Traditional restaurant.

More praying.

Some more rocks with faces and aprons.

Pretty serene

Get that bronze on brah. \o/

Very efficient toilet. Looks like a toilet, sink, and shower all in one. Do you stand in the toilet while showering?

April 13th:

Went to 回転寿司 Kaitensushi, conveyor belt sushi. 100 JPY for a plate. Basically a dollar for 2 pieces of sushi. But first we we saw this fleet of McDonald's delivery carts. Thanks a lot A-meh-rica...

As if eating McDonald's isn't bad enough. Here they don't even need to leave their room to do it..

From left to right, there's Felix (Germany), Emilio (UC Berkley), and Duncan (New Zealand). Great guys.

This place kicked American conveyor belt sushi's ass. You could use the screen to order specific dishes instead of waiting for the one you want to come along. Also, for every 5 plates you put into the machine, a little anime sequence would play on the screen, and if your character did something cool, you would win a little sushi phone decor. Unfortunately, only 1 in every 4 games is a winner, so I came out empty-handed. Next time.
After lunch, we went to Daiso, Japan's infamous 100 Yen store.

This cracked me up.

After buying some cheap, kind of useless but cool things, we headed home.

You can take your pets to Honey Poo for a good time!

Relaxed that evening. Played some guitar and prepared for the coming week.

April 14th:

Today was all research. I started the day off right with by reading and taking thorough notes on a paper similar to my topic. Then I was presented with 2 more papers to read. I only got through one more. Took a 20 minutes nap after lunch on my desk, cause that seems to be an ok thing to do and I literally could not stay awake... Anyhow. I prepared my first sample to analyze today.

199 g of TILOP-45, 1 g of VGCN

Same sample after 30 minutes of Table Milling. Basically mixing.

Pure TILOP 45 Titanium

The powder is EXTREMELY fine. The average particle size of the Titanium powder is 45 microns, or .000045 m. The black stuff is even finer. Here are some EXTREMELY blown up images of the first picture.
The x650 basically tells you this image is 650 times as large as the object you are looking at. So yes, these are individual particles of EXTREMELY fine titanium powder. As a reference the white strip represents a distance of 10 microns, or .000010 meters. Isn't it a whole world of its own at that scale? My mind is blown every time I look through the scanning electron microscope.

The smooth balls are Titanium and the the clusters of tubes are Carbon Nanofibers.

This is roughly what I am working towards. Having every Titanium particle coated with a light layer of Carbon nanofibers.

These carbon clusters are my enemies. These tubes should be dispersed throughout the Titanium matrix. Otherwise the carbon reacts to form Carbon solid solutions and Titanium Carbide TiC, which is not as strong as the individual nanofibers.