The White Room

The past few days have been less exceptional than my action-packed weekend, though certainly not boring or unpleasant.  Paris continues to grumble at our arrival - it's been cold, overcast, and drizzly off and on since we arrived, which makes it sometimes a bit less than pleasant to walk around outside and explore after work.  So work has been my main activity for the past few days.

I'm taking lots of spectra and chugging through the data in an attempt to determine the dependence of the line width on pump energy.  It's...not quite clear yet.  More data!

My dose of adventure today came in the form of clean-room training.  The samples used by LPQM are fabricated in an ISO class 5 clean room (that's a maximum of 100,000 particles 100 nm or larger [in diameter...?] per cubic meter of air), in which I got to walk today.  In principle I think I was supposed to learn how to use some of the machines, but there's so much to learn!  So I walked and listened and tried not to forget anything I was told.  In French, a clean room is "une salle blanche," which means "a white room."  Here's a link to the page describing the clean room at ENS Cachan.  It even has a picture!

Before entering the room proper, I had to stop in a sort of cramped foyer and properly attire myself.  I had to wear paper-y slip-on covers for my shoes, which had pointy toes and made me feel like an elf, a long coat with an attached hood that fit snugly over my forehead, which made me feel like a hardcore researcher, and latex gloves, which made me feel like I had latex gloves on my hands.  Then I was allowed inside.  I was given a whirlwind tour of the various machines, instruments, and useful things like glassware cabinets, and then practiced using a "profiler" to measure nanoscale channels in a sample.  I was also given fairly detailed instructions about using the spin-coater pictured a bit farther down the linked page above, though I wouldn't want to try using it on my own at first.  At the moment, I have no idea whether I'll be returning at all.  We shall have to see!

My evenings have been quiet.  Last night, Kierstin and I shared a fresh, warm baguette with Nutella for dinner, and tonight we cooked couscous with Linda and Mir.  We all plan on visiting the Louvre tomorrow after work, which should be quite fun.  I do hope the weather gets nicer before the weekend!

P.S. Mir has now posted so many photos of the weekend on his blog!  And he makes us all look like models with his spiffy lens and photography skills.  So many of the others are just absurdly photogenic anyway...