２０１４年６月５日ー８日

June 5th & 6th:

I'll be quite honest with you, I was not very productive during these days. On Thursday, I managed to consult with Imai Sensei on what to do for my next experiment. You see, the main reason my titanium samples with nanotubes dispersed were so much stronger than the pure titanium samples was because when I extruded the materials at 1000 degrees Celsius, titanium began to mix with the carbon nanotubes to form the ceramic, titanium carbide or TiC. I was able to observe this through the electron scanning microscope by seeing vast quantities of TiC particles on the fractured surface of a tensile test specimen. Basically, there were a lot more TiC particles, than unreacted nanotubes. And here's why:

This is called a phase diagram. It tells you what chemicals are in your mixture, based on how much solvent is in the solution (x-axis) and what temperature you are at (y-axis).

My solution was 0.5 weight percent C, which converts to roughly 2 atomic percent. Any temperature above 882 Celsius will cause the carbon to react with titanium.
So, the goal for my next experiment is to keep the temperature under 800 Celsius to preserve the nanotubes. Hopefully that will improve the strength even more in the end. So that's the course of action right now.
Anyways, I also went to this bakery called 神戸屋 Kobe ya, where you pay 400 yen, and you get to fill a basket with as much break as you'd like. You also get a drink on the side. It was my lab mate's idea, so I went with two of them. It was a good time.

Awww yeah!! The second time i went, I brought some jam.. Bread is a little bland on its own.. haha.

To show how productive I was... A picture of a the lowest-splash path line while peeing in a urinal. CAD style.

June 7th:

I slept in, played some basketball. I run the same shooting drill every time I go out. I'll diagram that next time I have the time. My friend Ben joined me for basketball a little, and then we got some food before our big 飲み放題 "all-you-can-drink" night out with the hall. It started raining, so check out this undersized raincoat I got for 500 yen:

Everyone was laughing cause it looks like a skirt if you cover my top half.. Do it! I dare you!

The night was a wild one. I drank the strongest alcohol I've ever had, Spiritas (96% alc vol.). I might as well have drank the pure ethanol from the lab we use to clean our samples.. The drinks were fun, and we headed home around 10:30. There, someone suggested for me to bring my guitar out and play. I went to my room, remembered the G-string was broken, tried to restring my guitar while intoxicated, lost one of the pins that hold the strings in place the base, spent 20 minutes searching for it, gave up, and just fell asleep. I found it above my headboard the next morning... Nice Franc. Here's a pic of my hall mates drunkenly trying to find money to pay.

We played some great Korean drinking games. This more-or-less sums up the night..

June 8th:

On Sunday, my friend Emilio intended to take me to this Zen Center in downtown. And by intended, I mean we rode the train to some random part where he thought the place was, but it turned out to be in eastern Osaka, not central Osaka. Miles of walking and several frantic, mistranslated phone calls later, we decided to give up and just get some dinner. We walked to Shinsaibashi for food. I'd never seen the place so abandoned. Nonetheless, we managed to stumble across this delicious Curry Udon (my favorite!) place. I won't say it's as good as つりとんたん, but it certainly hit the spot.

A la carte style udon shop with tempura toppings. Good stuff!