Work

We got to work today and really got going on our project. Basically our purpose here is to learn and practice as much as we can about a few types of materials analysis, get some work done for the lab at home by processing some samples, and most importantly to make firmer contacts with the students and faculty here at Birmingham.

The samples we have with us are called Primacor (shown above), which is an adhesive based polymer in pellet form, and a sample of snowboard base material for my senior honors thesis. The snowboard base material is a Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene base which has been sintered and infused with trace amounts of Gallium.

Frank Biddlestone is a lab technician here at Birmingham and our day to day supervisor along with Dr. Stephen Kukureka. Frank is extremely knowledgable about every machine in the lab in both a mechanical sense as well as a theoretical sense, which is fairly uncommon these days. Frank helped us use a thermo-press to mold the Primacor pellets into 2mm thick sheets which will be much more useful for the rest of our testing.

With these sheets we can use various punches to make appropriate sized samples for better material characterization.

<---The punch used is the one shaped like a dumbell

Waiting for the press to cool-------->

The properties we are interested in and hope to characterize while here are tensile strength, thermomechanical properties, possibly some fatigue, and some basic understanding of structure. The first machine we used is called a DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimeter)

We were very productive, even though we took a long lunch break with Dr. Cairns (research advisor at WVU) and his daughter, Dr. Barbero (Chair of MAE at WVU), and Dr. Kukureka. Dr. Barbero treated us (Thanks again!) to an amazing dinner at Barajee, an Indian Restaurant near Birmingham City Center.

I have eaten a lot of Indian food, but this was by far the best I have ever had, and definitely the fanciest, papadam, chicken tikka, lamb tikka, shish kebab, chicken tikka biryani (my new favorite), nan, and "still" or sparkling imported water.

This weekend Nick and I went to a local pub with our roommate and met some of her friends there. Most of them are in graduate school nearby and were all pretty fun people. We took it easy saturday and went into Birmingham City Center to look around and get some food. We ate at a place called Nando's, which can best be described as a South African Portuguese Chicken Restaurant specializing in Mozambican spices. It was pretty awesome and apparently there is now one in DC.

Some Chicken Tikka at a street stand=Delicious

Always wanted to see one of these

On Sunday we had originally planned on going to see Stonehenge but instead decided to plan that trip a little better and go back in Birmingham to explore around a little more. The international food festival going on was a pretty big deciding factor. We found a New Era flagship store in Birmingham (supposedly the largest in the world....but I disagree) which had some really sweet hats, but they definitely did NOT have my felt/neon green yankees hat, so I win.

Birmingham has some really awesome older architecture, most of which is juxtaposed with new modern buildings in the area.

The food here is amazing, there's Indian food everywhere and curry is officially the most popular dish in the country. I also got some awesome pesto cheese from the food market in town, it looks kinda sketchy but oh well.

Our Apartment

Well we have a third roommate that lives with us. Her name is Laura and she has been living here since October. She is from Boulder, Colorado and is doing a Masters in Egyptology here at the University of Birmingham. I took some pictures of the inside of our house for you to see. Its actually decent sized with four bedrooms, a kitchen, 1 bathroom, internet, cable, and playstation.

Some of our surroundings

Well, this is our humble abode on Tiverton road...it is actually pretty nice, with all the necessary amenities (PS2 and internet) and a location about 10 min. walk from the University.

This park is a few blocks from our house also, with a couple tennis courts, a "football pitch", and some basketball courts. The grafitti here is pretty spectacular as well.

<---This is the inside of the Goose at the O.V.T., which is at the end of our st.

This is the outside---->

Something that is pretty cool about the UK is that there is no smoking inside, which makes pubs much more pleasant than one would expect. In fact all packs of cigarettes ("fags" in the UK) have a giant warning that says either "SMOKING KILLS" or "SMOKING CAN BE VERY HARMFUL TO YOU AND THOSE AROUND YOU".

Anywho, I have some documents to read and a test to take for my summer class. I'll post some pictures and a little bit about what we're working on in the lab on Monday if possible.

What we've been doing for the past few days...

We arrived in Birmingham after a long flight from Philly, didn't get much sleep on the plane and it was the beginning of our first day of work....

So we took the train to the University of Birmingham and set out to find Frank or Stephen in the Metallurgy and Materials Dept. After a while of searching we contacted Simon, our landlord and met him just outside campus. He gave us a quick tour of Selly Oak, the area of Birmingham in which we are living. Driving on the left side of the road is pretty terrifying to say the least.

Once we got to our house on Tiverton rd. we took a nap for a few hours and went to find some dinner. We chose a pub at the end of the street, which was named the "Goose at the O.V.T." Nearly every combination of meal that you can get comes with a pint of either cider or lager. Some interesting things to note:

baked potatoes are called jackets,

fries are called chips,

chips are called crisps.

Baked beans and coleslaw are served with almost everything.

Subway serves bowls of meatballs and they have a Chicken Tikka Masala Sub.

Every restaurant has several curries, including my favorite food of all time, Chicken Tikka.

So, Nick and I are waiting in the Pittsburgh airport for our 3:20pm flight. We will fly to Philadelphia and then on to Birmingham. We will arrive around 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday, due to the 5 hour time difference. I have a feeling that we will be exhausted for our first day, but who knows. On top of that, we are still in a bit of limbo about whether or not we have a place to stay once we arrive....but I guess that is all part of the adventure.

I have been doing a lot of traveling lately as well as taking a ton of pictures (see left, its a picture from my apartment complex a couple days ago) and will hopefully be able to keep it up while I'm abroad.