Post 29: Bayern History and broken doors

Yesterday, I delivered my 24 bottles of powder to Frau Dunja Sailer to run through DSC and TGA (Differential Scanning Calorimetry and ThermoGravitational Analysis, or something like that.*) Other than that, I had very little to do until the Rheometer is repaired.  So today, I wound up browsing Wikipedia for random things.  I landed on a whole category for the Habsburg and the Wittelsbacher families (Ruled practically all of Europe for about 1000 years ending with the First World War.)  It will be interesting to read through a lot of that.  I think I landed on this information while on the search for the history of Meitingen and Bayern for information for my German 351 paper.  Eventually, I'll have to put some of it here.

And for the entire day today until about 4:30 the door was beeping (meaning that it wasn't shut and locked properly) even though it was shut.  At 4:30 they finally fixed it.  We, the other Diplomanten and myself were going crazy hearing it beeping for so long.

*DSC = a test where a reference and a sample are placed on "heaters" (for lack of a better word).  The sample is usually something that has a well defined heat capacity over a wide range of temperatures.  Both samples are heated at the same rate and the computer records how much energy is required per gram of sample to keep the sample at the same temperature as the reference.  In this way it is possible to see where the sample melts (requires more energy to melt), where it crystallizes (requires less energy), where there is a reaction (a peak marking the exothermic, or endothermic reaction, and how much energy is needed), and etc.
*TGA = a test where a sample is heated (from room temperature to 1000°C usually) and the difference in mass is recorded by the computer.  In this way, you can see when solvents and other miscellaneous substances leave the sample, and you can see how much of the sample is left at 1000°C, which is usually mostly carbon.  For me since I am working on a matrix fr Carbon Reinforced Carbon Fibers, this is important, because after 1000°C the matrix should leave behind the maximum possible amount of carbon to bind the carbon fibers together. 

It is also possible to set these two tests over each other, and get more information from them.  Say that a reaction occurs at 150°C (DSC) and there is a large reduction in weight (TGA) you can know that it is an exothermic reaction (because it requires large amounts of heat to release gases from the liquid/solid state to a gaseous state.  etc.