Note: The following journal entries do not necessarily reflect on everything that is going on with the experiment in itself that I am working on. This journal is more of an informal list of things that I have done. This journal is more a record of things that I have done during the NSF REU Program at SUNY at Stony Brook for the Summer of 2001. For more detailed entries that only involve the experiment, findings, and results please consult in the Experimental Notebook. I must also apologize to you, I have a tendency to write a lot. I will try to keep things at a minimum.

Week One:

1. Received an introduction of the laboratory that I will be working in, the Laser Teaching Center at SUNY at Stony Brook.
2. Looked at different projects that others have worked in the past by looking at their weekly reports and presentations. That way I can get an idea on what I like to work on.
3. Created my own web page for the lab. Dr. Noé, my advisor, gave me a book to brush up on my HTML.

Tuesday, 12 June 2001:

1. The research that I think is the most interesting to do for the summer will consist of either Raman spectroscopy, tunable diode lasers, or sonoluminescence, mainly depending on the amount of time that the experiment will require (I only have eight weeks).
2. My search for information on Raman spectroscopy on the internet has yielded somewhat vague information.
3. Most of the things that I was able to find were articles about sonoluminescence. For the most part, I spent a day looking at different abstracts.
4. Downloaded some interesting articles and Dr. Noé printed some of them to have around in the lab.
5. I am remembering the HTML language (it has been over six years the last time I used it) and I am learning how to use LINUX.

Wednesday, 13 June 2001:

1. A decision was made. I am going to go with sonoluminescence. It seems that it is the more feasible thing to do of the three projects that I was looking into. It is also the subject that I am the most unfamiliar with, so that will make it more interesting.
2. There are many articles in journals that I have found and as of now I am trying to weed through them.

Thursday, 14 June 2001:

1. It seems that most of the information that can be found online are just, as Dr. Noé puts it, "kitchen cookbooks" on how to produce single-bubble sonoluminescence. I decided to go to one of the main sources for creating single-bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL), which is an article printed on a regular column in Scientific American called The Amateur Scientist. This article became the basis for many webpages that try to explain the procedure to create single-bubble sonoluminescence.
   • R.A. Hiller and B.P. Barber, "Producing Light From A Bubble Of Air", The Amateur Scientist. Scientific American, 96-98 (February 1995).
   • L. A. Crum, "Sonoluminescence", Physics Today, 22-29 (September 1994).

Friday, 15 June 2001:

1. Continued to look through articles and downloaded some from the internet.
   • S.J. Putterman, "Sonoluminescence: Sound Into Light", Scientific American, 46-51 (February 1995).

Week Two:

1. Continued to download some articles, trying to find any recent developments or ideas that have already been implemented and go from there. A list of articles that are going to be used or are being considered can be found here.
2. I am supposed to start getting to know some of the equipment here. With the articles that I have read, we can figure out what are the things that we are going to need. I played around a bit with the function generator and the oscilloscope, among other things in order to figure how to produce single-bubble sonoluminescence.

Tuesday, 19 June 2001:

1. An article a day keeps the doctor away.
   • S.J. Putterman, "Sonoluminescence: The Star In A Jar", Physics World, 38-42 (May 1998).
2. Every Tuesday, students from the Physics REU Program will meet for talks and to take tours of different laboratories in the department. Today we took a tour of the Van de Graaff laboratory given by Rich Lefferts.
3. I will be reading a book to familiarize myself more with Operational Amplifiers. I plan on reading the first few chapters to get an idea of the electronics that I am going to need.
   • IC Op-Amp Cookbook by Walter G. Jung.

Wednesday, 20 June 2001:

1. Read an article on the production of sonoluminescence done by a student here at SUNY at Stony Brook.
   • R.P. Fliller III and H. Metcalf, "Sonoluminescence: Experiment and Experience", Journal of Undergraduate Research 2 (2), 108-121 (Spring 1996).
2. After reading the article I decided to do a little experiment following their advice in order to check how the equipment was set up. They recommended to make a plot of the amplitude of the microphone response as a function of frequency as I scanned in +/- 5 kHz intervals around the resonant frequency of the flask (25,000 Hz).
3. Went to the library and made some copies of articles that I could not find online. We should now have a sufficient amount of articles here in the lab on sonoluminescence.
4. Dr. Noé showed me how to degas the water by using a pump and supervised the handling of the equipment. After adding a bubble to the water flask, we were able to retain the bubble at the resonant frequency. We could see a bubble "dance" around, but no sonoluminescence was observed.

Thursday, 21 June 2001:

1. Read two articles.
   • B.P. Barber, R. Hiller, K. Arisaka, H. Fetterman, and S. Putterman. "Resolving The Picosecond Characteristics Of Synchronous Sonoluminescence", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91 (5), 3061-3063 (May 1992).
   • B.P. Barber and S. Putterman. "Observation of Synchronous Picosecond Sonoluminescence", Nature 352, 318-320 (25 July 1991).
2. Painted the inside of a box in black. I plan on putting the flask of water inside the box so that I can be better able to observe sonoluminescence.
3. We had some visitors at the Laser Teaching Center that wanted to know more about the things that go on here. I spent some time talking to them about sonoluminescence.

Friday, 22 June 2001:

1. Read two articles.
   • L.A. Crum and G.T. Reynolds, "Sonoluminescence Produced By "Stable" Cavitation", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 78 (1), 137-139 (July 1985).
   • R.G. Holt and L.A. Crum, "Acoustically Forced Oscillations of Air Bubbles In Water: Experimental Results", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91 (4), 1924-1932 (April 1992).
2. Painted a second coat of black paint inside the box, this time with a more opaque black paint.
3. Read a little more of Walter G. Jung's book.
4. Made a small opening in the box, just big enough to see with my eye any sonoluminescence.

Week Three:

1. Covered some of the open wires. I don't really feel like getting shocked. I want to see light come from bubbles of air, not light coming out of me as I get fried.
2. With the same water from last week, Dr. Noé asked me to look at the resonating bubbles to see how they behaved in the water that was degased last week so that we can then compare with a more degased water. The water that we have has gas, along with some dust.
3. Cleaned the flask that we are using and filled it up with clean water. I then degased it, just like the last time.
4. I was unable to get a resonance signal amplitude of 4.0 volts. The maximum that I was able to obtain was 3.5 volts. I was also able to observe the disruption of the resonating bubble in the oscilloscope, but I was unable to actually see the bubble this time.

Tuesday, 26 June 2001:

1. Read one article.
   • D. F. Gaitan, L. A. Crum, C. C. Church, and R. A. Roy, "Sonoluminescence and bubble dynamics for a single, stable, cavitation bubble", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91, 3166-3183 (1992).
2. Started getting ready for small informal presentations that the Laser Teaching Center is going to do today, part of the NSF REU Program. Today, we get to show my fellow REU students what we do and plan on doing.
3. I was actually able to produce a bubble today. This was just for the sole purpose of demonstrating the "dancing" bubble so that people could see its size.
4. Using the degased water from yesterday, I was able to scan different frequencies to observe the behavior of a bubble. I was able to see what the upper and lower threshold boundaries where the bubble is stable. I then scanned different frequencies using 10 mHz intervals with the lights off to see if I could see any sonoluminescence. Nothing was observed.

Wednesday, 27 June 2001:

1. I spent most of the morning trying to print a couple of articles. I don't know what is wrong, but I was unable to print the articles that I wanted to read.
2. Checked out the book "Frontiers of Nonlinear Acoustics: 12th International Symposium of Nonlinear Acoustics" so that I could eventually photocopy an article by D.F. Gaitan and L.A. Crum.
3. Using the degased water from Monday and following the same procedure from yesterday, I scanned different frequencies using 10 mHz intervals with the lights off to see if I could see any sonoluminescence.
         By accident I scanned higher than what I was planning on scanning and was able to observe SBSL for about five minutes, with the same bubble, only glowing for three-five seconds at a time, flickering off and on. I scanned and was able to observe SBSL between 27185 Hz and 27475 Hz.

Thursday, 28 June 2001:

1. In the morning I printed a couple of articles, the ones that I had problems printing yesterday.
2. Looked at results from other experiments that have been done in the part to see if my results from yesterday are similar to others. I want to see if the sonoluminescence that I produced yesterday can be improved.
3. Looked at a website that had some answers to the specific questions that I was trying to figure out. Most of the websites out there are just "cookbooks" with the same information over and over again. This website included information that was not found elsewhere, mostly about ideas on how to stablelize the bubble.
         The website was created by one W.A. Steer (a graduate student at University College London). This can be found on my list of websites, along with the website by Reinhard.
4. Duplicated my experiment yesterday to show the people the sonoluminescence. The sonoluminescent bubble is not stable by any means again and I showed it to people so they could see it. Now the plan of attack is to stabilize the bubble to have it last for more than a few seconds.

Friday, 29 June 2001:

1. In the morning I printed and read an article.
   • D. F. Gaitan and L. A. Crum, "Observation of Sonoluminescence From A Single, Stable Cavitation Bubble In A Water/Glycerene Mixture", Frontiers of Nonlinear Acoustics: Proceedings of 12th ISNA. Edited by M.F. Hamilton and D.T. Blackstock, 459-463 (1990).
2. Tried to repeat the experiment one more time, this time I was going to try to maximize the amplitude coming out with the LC Circuit. My water had a lot of gas and the only thing that I could do is make sure that the LC Circuit and the function generator were in phase with one another and the the maximum resonance is obtained.

Week Four:

1. In the morning I printed and read an article about sonoluminescence, sonochemistry, and cavitation.
   • K. Suslick, "Sonochemistry", Science 247, 1439-1445 (March 1990).
2. Boiled a flask of water for the experiment so that I could have some freshly degased water. I want to be able to play with the degased water that has been boiled.
3. Along with the boiled water, I also degased some of the water by pumping it. I want to be able to also play with the degased water that has been pumped.
   

Tuesday, 03 July 2001:

1. Looked into some of the websites that Dr. Noé sent me last afternoon to see if they were helpful towards our experiment.
2. Went to the library to read a little bit of an article (that I was unable to find online and was too big to make copies of).
   • B.P. Barber, R. Hiller, R. Lofstedt, S.J. Putterman and K.R. Weninger. "Defining the Unknowns Of Sonoluminescence", Physics Reports 281 (2), 65-143 (1 March 1997).
3. Went to the weekly NSF REU Program physics group meeting. Today's speaker was Dr. Thomas Hemmick and the topic was "Recreating the Birth of the Universe", a talk about RHIC and the Phenix Project.
4. As part of the NSF REU Program we are supposed to give a presentation and write a small report of what we have done over the summer time. I decided to start on the report to get the history and theory out of the way. I will not have that available online until it is somewhat completed.
5. Tried to run the experiment again, this time I was going to try to maximize the amplitude coming out with the LC Circuit. I was able to find a maximum amplitude of 4.0 volts at around 26,629 Hz, driving it with the function generator at 9.0 volts, but unable to sustain a bubble. I then tried to repeat my previous success by looking at around 27,250 Hz, but the amplitude was only about 2.0 volts. The bubble was only sustained for about 1-2 seconds at a time and it would then dissolve away. I think the water might be degased too much again.
6. I showed Dr. Noé what I had and he helped me maximize the output measured by the oscilloscope while minimizing the input. Part of the problem was the calibration of the oscilloscope and the rest of the problem was the way the wires were set up. In the arrangement that we have, some of the voltage was drawn away by being close to the function generator. In the end, we could have a maximum amplitude of around 4.5 volts at around 26600 Hz, driving the function generator at around 7.0 volts. That was a vast improvement.
7. While looking for resonances, Dr. Noé and I noticed that there was a drastic change of resonant frequency as the volume of the flask changed. Contrary to some of the articles that I have read which mention that a small change in volume inside the flask would not change the resonant frequency by much, we found that a 1-2 mL change in the amount of water would change the resonant frequency by around 50 Hz. The plan is to study this a little more.

Thursday, 05 July 2001:

1. Talked to Dr. Metcalf today about the things that I have been doing. We talked about sonoluminescence and impedance matching. He suggested that I look more into LC circuits and study the effect that different volumes have on the resonant frequency.
2. Read some more of Walter G Jung's book
3. Noticed that there was still some noise that was being picked up by the "microphone" wires since they were close to the "speaker" wires. The two different types of wires were separated.

Friday, 06 July 2001:

1. Made measurements and a plot using Quattro Pro of frequency vs. voltage just to see what the voltages are at specific frequencies with a multimeter. I scanned from about 24000 to about 27700 Hz using 10 Hz intervals, with the highest voltage found at 26600 Hz. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last few days.
         One thing that needs to be mentioned about the multimeter is that when measuring the voltage, the accuracy of the measurement decreases at higher frequencies. This is due to the specifications of the multimeter. In order to correct this, a specific voltage can be measured at different frequencies in order to "calibrate" the measurements.

Week Five:

1. Read an article.
   • H.P. Greenspan and A. Nadim, "On Sonoluminescence Of An Oscillating Gas Bubble", Physics Review Letters 5 (4), 1065-1067 (April 1993).
2. Degased some water by pumping on it.
3. The purpose for today is to repeat the measurements that I made on Friday with the same water, this time to compare the differences between this freshly degased water and the degased water that has absorbed gas for five days (measurements from last week). These measurements were made with the same amount of water (approximately 129 ml), then with 1 mL of water taken out (128 mL), and then with 2 mL less (127 mL). The results were somewhat mysterious.
         After further investigation with Dr. Noé, we came to the conclusion that not only is a multimeter giving us an inacurate measurement due to the high frequencies, but the cable had some capacitance that "corrupted" the measurements. A measurement with the multimeter at an specific frequency would yield great changes in voltage at the slight movement of the BNC cables that go from the the flask to the multimeter. Now, measurements made by the oscilliscope were barely noticible when the cable was shaken. Measurements will be continued using an oscilliscope.
         Note: Please note that at 127 and 128 mL, the measurements are not complete. These measurements were just taken in order to observe the peak resonance instead of scanning all of the frequencies.

Tuesday, 10 July 2001:

1. Read parts of "Sonochemistry and Sonoluminescence" by L.A. Crum et al.
2. Looked at a couple of websites to see if there was any recent information about sonoluminescence that I should know about.
3. Read parts of Walter G. Jung's book.
4. Read some of the manuals that we have around to see if we can rectify some of the problems that we had yesterday with the voltage measurements.
5. Went to the weekly NSF REU Program physics group meeting. Today's speaker was Dr. Alfred Goldhaber and the topic was "Einstein as Radical vs. Einstein as Conservative", a talk about Einstein's contributions.
6. Made measurements and a plot using Quattro Pro of frequency vs. voltage just to see what the voltages are at specific frequencies with an oscilloscope. I scanned from 25500 to about 27500 Hz using 10 Hz intervals, with the highest voltage found at 26660 Hz. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last day.
         The experiment was then repeated using longer cables that runs from the flask to the oscilloscope in order to study the behavior of the capacitance obtained from the cable. The sizes of the cables were about 5 meters and 55 meters (not shown below).

Wednesday, 11 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the introduction for my final report.
2. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did on Tuesday. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last two days. This was what I did for most part of the day.
   
3. Had a meeting with the other members of the Laser Teaching Center.

Thursday, 12 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the theoretical analysis for my final report.
2. Talked to Dr. Metcalf in order to learn more about laser cooling and trapping.
3. Went to a meeting here in the department. Today's speaker was Tony Pirera of Spectrum Thin Films Corporation and the topic was about specialized optical coatings made by his company.
4. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did on Wednesday. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last three days. This was what I did for most part of the day.
   

Friday, 13 July 2001:

1. Wrote a good deal of introduction and the theoretical analysis for my final report.
2. Read a little of L.A. Crum's book. I found this great quote and I plan on using it for my paper. Unfortunally, the quote is a bit long, but I still plan on using it because it tells just about everything that I have read in a few sentences.

Week Six:

1. Wrote part of the theoretica analysis for my final report.
2. Read a little of L.A. Crum's book.
3. Went to a synopsium here in the department.
4. Degassed some water by pumping on it. I made sure that there was a little extra so that this week I could make some measurements with different amounts of water. Overall, I degassed 130 mL of water, just a little over a perfect sphere for the flask that I am using.

Tuesday, 17 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the theoretical analysis for my final report.
2. Read a little of L.A. Crum's book.
3. Went to the weekly NSF REU Program physics group meeting. Today's speaker was Dr. Luis A. Orozco and the talk was about quantum optics.
4. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did last week, but this time in a smaller range of frequencies, just to be able to study the peaks. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last day.
         The measurements this week are to test out the exact amount of water that will be needed to yield the highest resonance. Basically, these measurements will just consist of doing a lot of scanning of frequencies (26,000 Hz - 27,000 Hz) to find where the peak is at different volumes of water (126 mL - 130 mL). This was what I did for most part of the day.
   

Wednesday, 18 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the experimental analysis for my final report.
2. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did yesterday. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last two days. This was what I did for most part of the day.
   

Thursday, 19 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the experimental analysis for my final report.
2. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did the other day. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last three days. This was what I did for most part of the day.
   

Friday, 20 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the theoretical analysis for my final report.
2. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did the other day. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last four days. This was what I did for most part of the day.
   

Week Seven:

1. Wrote part of the theoretical analysis for my final report.
2. Decided to use new deionized water in the flask. I measured the water in the flask so that now I can make exact volume measurements as a scan different frequencies.
3. I tried to degas some water yesterday by pumping on it. I was unable to obtain some liquid nitrogen. I will try again tomorrow.
4. I talked to Dr. Noé about what I did during the last week and showed him some of the graphs that I made.
         He mentioned that I should look at the function generator instructions manual to see it I can make this measurements by setting some kind of sweep function. One thing that could be done is setting some kind of rectifier so that I can be able to obtain a DC signal, which can then be measured using a multimeter. One of the multimeters that we have here in the lab has the ability to connect to a computer and be able to record measurements.

Tuesday, 24 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the experimental analysis for my final report.
2. I was able to degas some water today.
3. Went to the weekly NSF REU Program physics group meeting. Today's speaker was Dr. Ken Lanzetta and the topic was "Galaxies at Very Large Cosmological Redshifts", a talk about measurements of other galaxies.
4. With a couple of things that I found lying around I was able to make a "cap" for the liquid nitrogen container so that it can be connected to rubber tubing. The rubber tubing is then connected to a funnel. The purpose of this is to use the vapors from the liquid nitrogen in order to cool down the flask. The intensity of a sonoluminescent bubble is said to increase in great proportions when the water is cooled down.
5. Played with the function generator and was able to make it sweep between the frequencies desired.

Wednesday, 25 July 2001:

1. Wrote part of the experimental analysis for my final report.
2. Made more measurements with an oscilloscope, just like I did last week, but this time in a smaller range of frequencies, just to be able to study the peaks. The water used has absorbed some gas in the last day.
         The measurements this week are to test out the exact amount of water that will be needed to yield the highest resonance in more detail. Basically, these measurements will just consist of doing a lot of scanning of frequencies (26,500 Hz - 26,800 Hz) to find where the peak is at different volumes of water (127 mL - 128 mL), five drops at a time. This was what I did for most part of the day.
   
   

3. Since the range of frequencies is the smallest that I have done since I started, the plan is to look for sonoluminescence in the afternoons. In case sonoluminescence can be seen for the specific day of measurements, the next step will be to cool down the flask by using vapors from liquid nitrogen.
         No sonoluminescence was seen today. The water is too degassed.
   
   

Thursday, 26 July 2001:

1. Updated my webpage. I was finally able to put some graphs on my journal page, showing some of the work that I have done over the last few weeks.
2. Started writing my abstract. As part of the NSF REU Program we must turn in an abstract by tomorrow.
3. Dr. Noé was kind enough to take the people at the Laser Teaching Center out to eat at The Curry Club for lunch.
4. Dr. Noé and I went to Exphil Calibration Labs to pick up a multimeter that they are going to let us borrow for a few days for my experiment. With this multimeter we will be able to measure voltages at high frequencies.
         Since we were in the area we decided to stop at Spectrum Thin Films Corporation and we talked to Mr. Pirera. He was kind enough to give us a quick tour of his facilities.
         Mr. Pirera made some phone calls and arranged for us a tour at the facilities of one of his biggest customers, Photonics Industries International Inc. where we talked to Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Yin. They gave us a brief tour and talked about some of the work that they do.
5. Made some measurements with the borrowed multimeter. The voltage measured in the multimeter still changes drastically with any movement of the cables. Measurements with the oscilloscope do no exhibit these properties. Grounding the multimeter was a vast improvement, but changes in voltage were still noticiable. The only alternative is to check the connections of the cables, the cables themselves, specially the wires close to the flask that connect to the piezo-electric transducers.

Friday, 27 July 2001:

1. Continued writing my abstract and part of my experimental analysis.
2. Made some more measurements with the borrowed multimeter.

Week Eight:

1. Worked on the abstract that I am going to turn in as part of the NSF REU Program with Dr. Noé. We also worked on and cleaned up my website.
2. Talked to Dr. Metcalf along with Doug and Jose in order to learn more about laser cooling and trapping.
3. Earlier in the day Dr. Noé mentioned to learn a bit more about Bjerknes forces for my presentation (just in case). I did just that.
4. Printed my final report and proofread part of it.
5. Dr. Noé and I decided to correct some of the electrical connections in the experiment.
6. Wrote a program that came with the multimeter that we borrowed. With this the computer that we have can take the measurements, a nice improvement, rather than doing it by hand. Then the problem came when we found out that the cable needed to connect the multimeter and the computer needed to be a serial port cable with two female ends, which we didn't have.

Tuesday, 31 July 2001:

1. Tested the program that I wrote for the multimeter that we borrowed. Dr. Noé bought a connection for the cable that worked. We adjusted the multimeter to the parameters for the program (baud rate, parity, ect). Unfortunally, we could not get the program to work.
2. Adjusted some of the connections that the experiment had. The photomultiplier was just kind of hanging, so I made sure that it was held on tighly to avoid the damage of it.
3. Talked to Dr. Graf about final preparations and the paper that we are supposed to write before we all leave.
4. Talked to Dr. Metcalf along with Doug and Jose in order to learn more about laser cooling and trapping.
5. Worked on my final report and proofread part of it.

Wednesday, 1 August 2001:

1. Worked on my final report and presentation.

Thursday, 2 August 2001:

1. Went to the Physics REU Student Symposium at 9:30 am, in room S-240 of the Physics/Math building. The order of presentations is:
   

         9:30     Renee Goertzen
         9:45     John Dulka
         10:00    Kenneth Miller
         10:15    Jory Meltzer
         10:30    Carlos Martinez-Torteya
         10:45    BREAK
         11:00    Amy Roberts
         11:15    Trevor Burris-Mog
         11:30    Doug Broege
         11:45    Fernando Ziegler
         12:00    Ellen Bennert
         12:15    LUNCH
         1:00     Nathan Borggren
         1:15     James Osborne
         1:30     Joshua Hellhake
         1:45     Julio Vargas
         2:00     BREAK
         2:15     Salvador Hernandez
         2:30     Andrew Grover
         2:45     Ryan Hecox
         3:00     Sean Burke