Grace的進修雜記:)

It costs a lot for international shipping, but my lovely family sent me a package full of love today.

Thanks again for all your support.

Mid-Autumn Festival is an important holiday for me when I was in Taiwan. Not only I can get days off but also I will enjoy BBQ time  with my family.

Even I wasn't able to visit my family this summer, I got myself moon cake as comfort food for Mid-Autumn Festival.

In the past, I heard about wildfire from the news, but this is the first time I feel the impact from the wildfire.

https://katu.com/news/local/beachie-creek-fire-has-not-yet-merged-with-riverside-fire-officials-say

Stay safe is the only thing we mention to each other.

When I was in Taiwan, it's easy to get any kind of dumplings, but I am in the USA now, I need to learn to make what I want to eat.

I used 3 cups of all purpose flours, one cup of hot water , less than one cup of room temperature water, and half teaspoon of salt. It took a while to make a dumpling dough.

When I first received the cell broadcast, I wasn't sure what's going on. My first thought was heavy rain forecast or something else, but I reached out the phone and found out it was curfew. The announcement was meant to control protests, which  I believed most of my friends saw the news and worried about me.

Here is a link to the local news https://katu.com/news/local/mayor-does-not-extend-curfew-in-portland-hopes-protests-remain-peaceful

Actually it was happened around the end of May, and I was busy writing the progress review , prepared for the final exam , revised for the final science writing report. Therefore, I would not be outside my apartment after eight pm through the next morning six am. I knew that everything will be ok. So, no worries!

When the Rose starts to blossom, it's time for Portland Rose Festivals, but this year it is happening on line.
If you're interested in the festival, you can check out the website by using key words "Portland Rose Festival."

This is something new for me about Astrophysics from a conference.
The speaker,Professor Orsola De Marco, who focuses on collecting data on separation of binary stars, and is well-known as an astrophysicist. She works for the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University Sydney, Australia. Professor Marco received her Bachelor degree in Astrophysics from University College London in 1994, and three years later achieved a PhD in Astrophysics from University College London, United Kingdom.

​The speaker used story telling methods to introduce the viewer to how stellar birthoccurs, including fusion reaction and stellar equilibriums such as gas pressure vs gravity. After giving audiences some background knowledge, she started to show us what Planetary Nebulae look like in the sky. She not only described the shapes of Planetary Nebulae, but also tells us how they form. With simple cartoon illustrations and video shows in the simulations, she was able to explain why giant stars do not rotate fast enough. Just like ballet a dancer opens their arms to slow down the rotation, the star has a magnetic field with an Automatic Giant Branch super wind that reduces the rotation speed. The fact that the universal may change the conditions so the parameters may not reach the requirements for things to happen. Maybe in the future Asymptotic Giant Branch super-wind speed not at low metallicity but at high end. Who knows what will happen?

   Once again this is just an assignment to turn in a summary for the seminar .
The speaker, Philp Ball, is a writer whose focus is science and who has worked for the journal “Nature” for more than twenty years. He received his Bachelor degree in Chemistry from University of Oxford. Since he is interested in Science, he pursued a doctorate degree in Physics from Bristol University. He wrote several books that were best-seller such as “Critical Mass”, and “Beyond Weird: Why Everything you though you knew about Quantum Physics is Different”.

   As a Physics major student, I do agree with Richard Feynman claim that “Nobody understands quantum mechanics.” The speaker also quoted from Niels Bohr who said that “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it”. We might have been misled by quantum theory in the past when we were trying to learn Quantum Mechanics. Once the challenge of wave functions had been overcome, we understand that the position in space in the time domain is not as simple as  rocket science. Therefore, we learn to look at objects as one huge system in which two things can happen simultaneously even if they are separated far away but somehow related to each other.

"Lightning in a Canteen” presented by Professor John Foste    
If you are interested in the presentation, here comes the link of the seminar.
https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/video/catalog/JsmHiqVd6hGxEaaawj9Bbg/JDIYa1x-6hGHKdDUqieAZw/1586874598 
The speaker, John Foster, is a professor whose focus is Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan. He received his bachelor degree in Physics in 1991 from Jackson State university. With hard work in advanced studying, he got his PhD in Applied Physics in 1996 from University of Michigan.
In this presentation, the speaker is talking about using Plasma for Water Purification. Due to climate change, it becomes a serious issue if we do not treat the water resource carefully. We may end up using water with contamination from the enlivenment. Therefore, finding out a good way to improve water purification is an important topic. As we know that the discharge mechanism of an electric field can kill bacteria, viruses and other microgametes.  When they pass through the high voltage electric field, the cell nucleus will be destroyed due to the electric shock from the plasma reaction system. But thermal plasma cannot be used to treat water directly, so Cold Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas is the method being applied in this study. In this research they focus on how pack bed discharge and distribute discharge are the keys to scaling up the plasma liquid interface. 
To keep us in existence the earth needs at least three basic requirements, which are sunshine, air, and water. Not only does water play an important role in our bodies, but also the environment needs water to keep in balance. Since our water resource are coming from nature, using an efficient way of purification will be a challenge for the future.

Yesterday my school announced that we will continue remote learning through June 13.

For sure the social distances helps the case number slow down, and watching the instructors " playing the movie " is a little different from we all sit in the classroom.

When the lecturer courses are happening in the classroom, we are playing the student role there. The instructor can get our reactions right away, but sitting in front of the laptop without turning on the video makes huge difference to the instructor for checking our understanding.

The social distances order makes this term even harder for us to attend any seminar. So our instructor asked us to find some interesting videos related to our field and write something about the presentation.

The following is what I wrote for the assignment.

Received one kit for the experiment physics in the beginning of this week, but I did not know how I am going to make it work. Learning from the hands on experiment is the best way for me to memorize the principles in the real world.

After several failures, finally I got the LED blinking.

Since the COVID-19 coronavirus started to spread out around the world, I was worried about my family and friends who are in Taiwan. As you might see that Taiwan has been highlighted in the news of making more face masks in short period of time, now things are under control over there, but my family starts to worried about me staying in the USA.  
I did go to the store and pick enough food to stay home during the spring break, and I will be ok.

………………………以下部分內容來自katunews

After COVID-19 'attacks' the USA, my family and friends were worried about me. I did go grocery shopping and try to stay positive.

Looks like both cauliflower and broccoli are very popular, but I like green cabbage which still available for all customers to pick!

This is just a short report for a talk in my department.

   Thermionic Cathodes were first discovered by Edison in 1883. It was not until 1920 that cathode thermionic emission was found. After several improvements, thermionic cathodes could be used as a device with arc discharge caused by thermionic emission of the cathode, but the temperature was still higher than 1000º C back then. It was not until 2005 that a new method was used for distributing nano-crystalline scandium oxide in the tungsten powder, which helped the cathode achieved emission levels below 970 º C. The goal is to make higher cathode emission with small size, low power, low capacitance for using in computer monitors and high-quality television.