Research Update May 27th

I could spend too much time doing anything productive at work today because of our trip to Idaho. But I did get to see that the pressure in the MOT chamber had come down to ~1x10^-5 T and when I heated up the pump the pressure only raised slightly (~1.11). So I think it’s still very much related to the Sr. I had forgotten that with new Sr in the vacuum there should be a huge pressure bump at 150 C, and I loaded the cell with more Sr than ever previously. Probably will see another bump when I heat it up again. Although most of the gunk is probably out of the Sr now.

May 27th

Weight: 204.8

Total Inches: 67.25”

I’m surprised by the weight loss this week. I wonder if it’s related to the fact that I haven’t been able to exercise at all this week because of my back.

Breakfast: protein shake.

Lunch: 1 egg + egg whites scrambled with onions, peppers, and zucchinis.

Dinner: Since we were driving up to Idaho we stopped for dinner in a small town that had a burger king drive through. I got a whopper and I ate a couple of fries as well. It tasted ok going down, but about 5 minutes later it hit my stomach like a brick. I felt horrible. I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up but I really felt like I should throw it up. I haven’t had any processed food in over a month and I paid for it. Ugh. I may have also had a couple of animal cookies and a chocolate chip cookie at the rest stop .

May 26th Research Update

Great news today: FLUORESCENCE! I’m finally starting to figure out this vapor cell. After yesterday I was left with no other choice but to assume that we didn’t finish evaporating the oxide layer before we melted the lead shields. To avoid coating the windows while having to bring the Sr cup up to such hot temperatures I didn’t put any heat whatsoever on the valve and I didn’t insulate it outside of the band heater either. Plus the pump was still on the cell. Still with the windows at 380 C and the cup at 730 C the valve came up to ~176 C. I left the laser scanning through the cell and after a while I started to see fluorescence just above the cup. The scattering moved back in forth in space over the cup as the laser scanned in frequency.

I cooled the cup and when I came back from lunch I brought the valve up to 315 C and the cup up to 320 C with the cell sealed off from the pump. I couldn’t see any signal so I brought the cup up above 700 C again. The longer I left the cell the better the scattering got until I was finally totally absorbing the laser on good scans. I suspect that previously I had only exposed a very small surface area of Sr and that I was finally getting a large enough surface area to have a good vapor. As the laser scanned the absorption would first appear as a line across the cell then become a diffuse cloud of blue through the cell and finish as a line again.

Tomorrow I’ll see if I can get a decent vapor without having to get the cup so hot. Despite running the cell at these temperatures for the better part of the afternoon I noticed no degradation in visibility on the windows. Finally, some progress.

In other news I am experiencing major problems with the vacuum on the MOT chamber. When I came in this morning the pressure was at 5.86x10^-6 which wasn’t great but I figured it might be good enough given the junk I’d added to the chamber. So I turned on the heaters on the ion pump and packed the blank facing the oven with dry ice. The pressure dropped with the dry ice but started to come up with heat on the pump. So I started heating the nozzle and the oven back, but not the oven. Before the nozzle hit 200 C (oven back at 240 C I think) the pressure jumped to 10^-4 Torr. That scared me so I turned off all the heaters and let the dry ice run out. Back at room temperature the pressure was still greater than 10^-4. I figured it must have been the blank on the back of the oven, vented the chamber and changed out the gasket again. The old gasket looked like it had just barely sat off a little as it bore marks on one side from the sniffer port. This time I was extremely careful in tightening down the flange and was able to get it to seat evenly with the smallest gap we’ve seen on that flange yet (although still just bigger than you might normally see for some reason). I don’t know what’s up with that flange because without a gasket I can push the 2 flanges together with almost no effort at all.

When I pumped down the chamber it never got below 2x10^-4 T. Frustrated I took a heat gun and started testing copper gasketed flanges. I noticed no noticeable pressure raise on the oven back but when I put it on the blank facing the oven I got an immediate increase in pressure. At the 10^-4 T level I figured that was pretty significant so I vented the chamber again and changed out that gasket. When I pumped down again it only came down to the 10^-4 level. Argh! I was out of time so we’ll have to investigate the chamber more tomorrow. The gasket from this flange gave no hints to any problems. If we have to do leak detection it will have to wait until Monday unfortunately.

May 26th

Weight: 206.6 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.5”

Still losing weight this week. Overall I’m now down 7 lbs. which for a three week period is pretty decent weight loss. There was a study a while ago that suggested the fastest weight loss rate that didn’t shock your system was about 2 lbs. a week. We’ll see how it continues. After I finish the first month I think I might add back in natural sugars from fruits and berries again as well as a little cheese.

Breakfast: Protein shake. Yep, you know it. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it takes care of my protein requirement. For someone who never ate breakfast normally it’s a pretty easy way to get it done. I added a few pieces of bacon to that since we celebrated the kids’ last day of school. I’m going to severely cut down on the bacon from here on out though because of sodium nitrate. Sodium nitrate is a compound added to meats to give them a red appearance and is usually found in hot dogs, lunch meat, smoked fish, corned beef etc. Unfortunately, nitrates added to any food often break down into nitrosamines which are cancer causing chemicals and this is especially true in bacon. If you’re going to cut any additives from your diet the American Dietetic Association says this one should be at the top of your list. While I’m not going to completely cut out bacon, I’m seriously cutting back and maybe I’m going to start looking for local or natural cut bacon that don’t include any nitrates for color.

Lunch: Salmon bento box from Demae. I substituted a second salad for the rice, but still cheated on the dumplings and california rolls.

Dinner: I wasn’t that hungry for dinner but fajita style leftover top round steak with pepper, onions, and zucchini hit the spot.

The night was finished off with sugar free jello and some almond butter.

Research Update May 25th

Today we spent most of the time reassembling the MOT. I took the remaining piece of our 20 g of Sr and cut it roughly in half. I flushed and was flowing argon through the sink when I did it but I didn’t bother to assemble a sealed system with the gloves this time. I set up 2 dishes with dodecane in them and transferred all of my Sr into one. Then I rinsed all the pieces in the second one before attempting to scrape at the oxide layer and placing them all in a glass vial.

While the MOT was down we replaced the ion gauge and put a blank with a metal gasket in place of the slower window. The purpose for this is so that we can cool it to try and collect as much oxide as possible when we evaporate it. Unfortunately, when I put the Sr in the MOT I was not thinking about the construction of the oven. The oven consists of an volume that is slightly smaller than the rest of the tube so that the plunger that hold the Sr in butts up against a small lip. The purpose of this is to keep Sr from diffusing out the back of the oven. I put in enough Sr that it didn’t all fit in the oven area and I started mashing it up against the lip. This prevented the flange blank at the back to not seal properly and I wasted 2 gaskets trying to figure out what was going on. Ultimately, some Sr had to be removed from the oven and the lip scraped with a sharp tool. Still the last gasket didn’t compress evenly for some reason. I couldn’t tell why, so I left the system pumping down overnight. When I left the pressure was at 1.39x10^-5 Torr. If it’s not significantly lower than that when I get in tomorrow morning I’ll vent the system again and see if I can get the gasket to sit better.

I heated up the vapor cell with just the windows first. When the windows were at 380 C the valve was at 188.7 C and the Sr cup was at 257 C. With the valve at 400 the cup was only at 280.8 C. Even though this should have been better than 10% absorption I used the cartridge heater to bring it up to ~312 C. Still, no absorption while scanning from 21698.22-21698.35 cm^-1 and .27 – .38 and .48-61. Either of the first 2 scans should have covered the line. Maybe tomorrow first thing I’ll check my estimate of what range I need to cover just to make sure. In the meantime, I tightened the swage connector between the cell and the pump and pumped on the cell again. I was going to cool the valve and see if I could get fluorescence at a higher temperature but I ran out of time. I closed the valves again including the right angle valve between the pump and the tee. Just to see if I tightened the swage enough I left the tee under vacuum and the pressure was at .79 Torr when I left which seems kind of high, but we’ll see if it gets close to atmosphere overnight.

First thing in the morning I’m going to see if I can get a signal at evaporation temperatures. If not I’ll have to figure out if we have a leak on the cell, or if the Sr has been compromised somehow. If I can’t solve the problem tomorrow I’ll probably move to the new double tee configuration. I should mention that for convenience I plugged the pump setup into the filtered power and the laser could not follow the doubling cavity for a full scan while the pumps were on. I don’t know yet if it was due to the vibrations of the pump or noise on the filtered line because I didn’t get to the point of switching the power for the setup, but we’ll find out tomorrow. It seems weird that it should be related at all because I’m pretty sure I’ve locked the laser with that setup running on filtered power before.

May 25th

Weight: 207 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.25”

Alright, it seems like not being able to exercise has actually maybe kicked started some weight loss. I’m sure it’s combined with the fact that I’m eating less as a result of being less hungry as a result of not moving. So, we’ll see if that theory holds true with tomorrow’s stats since today I overate at dinner. Well, at least I feel like I did.

Breakfast: The protein shake. Nothing special.

Lunch: I made myself 3 chicken tenders and a can of black beans with rotel. I finished 2 tenders and about 1/4 the can. I felt like I was going to throw up I was so full. I have never said that after having eaten so little food. I also had a packet of trail mix at school today including the M&Ms and the raisins. So, a little cheat I guess.

Dinner: Top round steak with stir-fried onions and peppers and a tomato. This cut is so tasty marinated in red cooking wine, garlic salt, and pepper that I was doomed to eat to much before the grill was hot. On the flip side I had A LOT of vegetables with it so maybe that’s why I feel so full. We’ll see tomorrow morning.

Dessert was the ever popular sugar free jello and I had a some almond butter to put the day to rest. I did have and interesting food experience today though. The kids had grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and asked for way more than they actually ate. I hate it when they do that but that’s a discussion for the other blog. They were looking so good that I picked one up and took a bite out of it. Surprisingly, even though it was made with Katie’s homemade bread, fried in butter, and had a nice thick slab of molten cheese in the middle it was just okay. In fact, I didn’t consider it worth the cheat and spit it into the trash. I couldn’t understand why, so I tested my theory on the brownies the kids had for dessert which were, by look and feel, the perfect texture. It was the same thing and I spit in into the trash too. I don’t know what’s going on but I sure hope my carb taste buds come back for the weekend.

Research Update May 24th

I machined aluminum blanks for the vapor cell and the MOT slower window today. I placed 2 .25” holes 1.5 cm apart in the center of the vapor cell ones and a 1 cm diameter hole in the center of the MOT window. When I brought the vapor cell windows up to 380 C the windows were now at ~330 C in the center which means that they will work just fine. I didn’t have time today or I would have looked for fluorescence in the cell.

I should mention, if I already haven’t, that when I earlier thought that the master 922 nm laser was starting to act finicky and weird it was because Michael had disconnected all of my piezo drivers. So it was finicky and weird, until I plugged them back in.

We vented the MOT chamber today to find out why the ion gauge had suddenly stopped working. It turns out that the shield that protects the lower part of the collector from deposition had been knocked loose of it’s spot welds when we were banging on the MOT window. I tacked it back on with Torr Seal vacuum epoxy and we’ll see how that goes tomorrow. Since we already have epoxy on the MOT mirror in the vacuum that seemed like a better idea than welding the shield back onto the gauge.

May 24

Weight: 207.8 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.75”

Despite the complete lack of any movement yesterday I experienced a considerable loss in weight. I also didn’t eat very much, but then again I wasn’t hungry. I’ve been thinking about it actually and I have to say I am surprised that I’m not down more overall. Just for comparison I’ve been keeping a rough calorie count in the back of my head of what I eat everyday, and I’m eating considerably less calories than I used to normally without feeling hungrier. But even then, except for Saturdays all of my calories come almost entirely from protein and vegetables. I’ve almost completely cut out carbohydrates and sugars (especially compared to what I used to eat). So even if I had 1 piece of bread per day or something along those lines I would have expected to see more significant changes than I have. I do feel better eating this way though so I’m going to keep it up. I think I need to make a better effort at eating more vegetables though.

I wasn’t hungry again this morning so it was a protein shake with almond milk and cinnamon. If you want a picture see a previous post.

Lunch: I forgot my camera. Some picture food log huh? Well, it’s really for me anyways. The idea of taking pictures in the first place was to get me thinking about the things I eat. I’m pretty aware now, especially since I’m beginning to not eat just for the sake of eating. I’ll keep taking pictures when I remember but I’m not going to sweat it. Lunch was a farewell for a friend at Thai Village. I got the mixed vegetables with chicken. I thought I was being smart by asking for 2 salads instead of a salad and a rice bowl, but then they brought me 2 spring rolls as well. I’m pretty sure the spring rolls were still better than big ball of rice and I enjoyed them thoroughly. One thing about eating this way is that I’ve become much more sensitive to sugar. I never thought much about the dressing on the salads there, but now it seems really sweet to me.

I had a packet of peanuts this evening, but then I wasn’t really hungry for dinner. I had a small strip of leftover steak and a handful of corn off of the kid’s plates. I can’t remember whether or not corn is one of the allowed vegetables, but given my entire dinner I’m not really concerned about it. Oh, and I had a bite out of Katie’s fresh home made bread. It’s amazing how good that tastes when you haven’t been eating any. A sugar free jello and a tablespoon of almond butter topped off the evening.

May 22 and 23

May 22

Weight: 210.2 lbs.

Total Inches: 67”

This is the smallest increase after a binge day I’ve ever had. I chalked it up to the bike ride the day before. Despite the increased Saturday activity I wasn’t very hungry come Sunday morning. So breakfast consisted of a protein shake.

I’ve started making my protein shakes with almond milk. However, even the unsweetened almond milk constitutes a small deviation from the rules since it contains a very small amount of starch as a thickener. I think that is specific to the blue label brand, however, and next time I’ll see if I can find one that is simply the filtered water and almonds. I’m going to stick with it for a couple of reasons though: it tastes so much better, and it provides a natural source of calcium.

Sunday ended up being a REALLY lazy day and I fell asleep until we were late for Stake Conference, which meant skipping lunch. Dinner was lasagna and I forgot to take a picture, but that’s okay since everyone knows what lasagna looks like anyways. What I should have taken a picture of though were the cookies and brownies we had for dessert.

Looking back, my largest progress as made during the first week when I wasn’t the necessarily the strictest (I consistently had some form of fruit after I biked to or from school), but I at the least diversity in my diet. My goal is to try to revert to that this week. I am noticing that I seem to feel fuller on less food lately, but I’ve been eating the same amount of food as usual out of habit. My other goal this week is to not eat more than I need to.

May 23

Weight: 211.2 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.5”

I was really surprised by the increase this morning since I had skipped one meal on Sunday. Maybe it was the desserts? Then again, I was surprised by a lack of gain from Saturday, so maybe part of it was delayed? I don’t know, What I do know is that my back was KILLING ME. So much so that I didn’t make it to work today. Breakfast was my protein shake with the almond milk (see the picture above if you need one ) and a couple of bites of Katie’s eggs and vegetables.

I layed down until lunch which consisted of leftover roasted chicken mixed with leftover spinach all sautéed together.

I shared a packet of cashew with Andrew for snack after laying down for the afternoon.

Dinner consisted of stir-fry onions and peppers with top round steak sliced into 1/4” slabs. It was amazing. So much so that I forgot to take a picture. We’lll see how I do tomorrow with almost no physical activity at all today (literally).

May 21, 2011

Weight: 208.6 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.5”

Saturdays are the hardest day to keep a picture log of what I’m eating. Not that I’m sure that Saturday matters in that respect since it’s binge day. The day was topped off with breakfast from the young men/women in the ward. I had  protein shake first, and that was followed by pancakes with bacon and sausage and eggs. That was topped off with orange juice. The rest of the day consisted of the usual mix of cookies and bread and Kallie sandwiches and whatnot. Although, I must add much less than normal. I really didn’t eat much just to eat today. For the most part I ate when I was hungry. Dinner was top round steak with spinach and zucchini. That was accompanied by a roll and fresh berries. I did top off the night with a chocolate donut (my only one of the day).

I managed to get in lots of activity today too. We took the activity day girls on a bike ride to Bridal Veil Falls which, by the route we took, was about 20 miles round trip. I added another short stint on the bike to Macey’s and back as well. On top of that I did my pushup/pull-up routine and Ab Ripper tonight since I missed last night.

May 20th Research Update

The ion gauge failed on the MOT chamber today. For some reason the grid was contacting the collector. We cooled down the ion pump in preparation for venting the chamber. Is there anything that won’t go wrong with this chamber? Why has it worked all this time? How did something inside the vacuum change? Perhaps we started something by banging on the window to get it off.

In other efforts we successfully melted the lead in the vapor cell on both windows. However, we learned something about temperature gradients in the cell. At first we were afraid that a rush of suddenly molten lead would rush to the center of the cell, up around the lip, and down into the Sr if we had the cell at too steep an angle to prevent the lead from falling against the window. That was never a valid fear apparently.

I initially brought just the window up to 340 C. This was enough to soften the lead enough to fall through against the inner diameter of the cell which is a little narrower than the inner diameter of  the gasket. So we brought the cell up 380 C. This was enough to get the gasket to fall a little farther in and produce a small molten bubble at the bottom. Bringing up the temperature on the valve to 380 and the cartridge heater to 350 C only improved things slightly.

Not until we covered the windows with aluminum foil caps did the lead suddenly melt. The shallowness of the angle left most of the lead at each end in a puddle up against the windows. We could have easily used a much steeper angle and gotten most of the lead away from the windows. Also I would have made the foil just big enough to cover the inner diameter of the cell as opposed to the gaskets.

The noticeable difference in temperature between the heater and the lead made me wonder about the window. Not only were there significant temperature gradients from the center to the edge, there were significant gradients from one side of the glass to the other. At the glass to metal interface the temperature was less than 300 C when the heater was at 380, and the center of the glass was at ~170 C. This means that running at temperatures to get a Sr vapor puts the center of the window as the coldest part of the cell even when the windows are the heat source. We’re going to machine covers for the windows to prevent them from air currents and to reduce the gradients across them.

May 20th

Weight: 208.8 lbs.

Total Inches: 66.75”

I was surprised that my weight gain from yesterday wasn’t worse due to the donut episode. I had a protein shake for breakfast and worked through lunch, but dinner was awesome. I took my wife out to Texas Roadhouse where I may have started my binge day a little early (I’ll think I’ll take it pretty easy tomorrow). Dinner consisted of possibly the best rib-eye I have ever had with a side ribs, baked beans, and a salad. I also had a roll or two. The evening was topped off with a mix of frozen custard, yogurt, and ice cream. Sorry, no pictures. I have to say, all that still didn’t make me feel sick like those stupid donuts did. Ugh.

Research Update May 19th

Today was a very frustrating day, but may have led me to a better process for loading the MOT with Sr. First off, I should mention that I realized that the ion pump magnet probably has not been degraded since it was operating fine before we turned it off and did not heat it again when it began operating poorly. Most likely the pump was contaminated with Sr-oxide and we’re seeing some vapor pressure issues because the temperature of the arc when running is going to spew more oxide until it redistributes to other parts of the chamber.

This morning I set about assembling the vapor cell with my lead window protectors. I couldn’t seem to get a lead foil thin enough to my liking in the lab, so I went upstairs to Wes’ machine shop and used a real anvil and a metal working hammer. I was able to get a 1/4” dia. 2” long piece of lead spread out enough to cover 2 2.75” CF gaskets. I cut the foil to the right size by placing a gasket on top and scoring the inner diameter with a sharp tool. I used a wire cutter to cut out a slightly larger circle than I’d marked and cleaned both the foil and gasket with spectroscopic grade propanyl (isopropyl alcohol). It actually wasn’t feasible to use a soldering iron to tack the foil onto the copper, but it staid well enough by pressing the foil onto the copper by hand. I was careful that the lead did not extend to the point where the knife edge contacts the copper.

When I vented the chamber for the first time to install a window it seems like some atmosphere may have flowed through but I don’t think it could have been significant enough to worry about. After both windows were installed and the cell insulated again, I started heating.

Because lead melts at 327 C I set the windows to 300 C and left the valve at 400 C. I must have positioned the fan for the cartridge heater better this time though because I was able to actually get the sheath to 724 C while the lead end was 265 C. It did require more power this time (88 VAC) because the windows were contributing significantly less heat to the cell. Since, we didn’t have a sensitive enough gauge on the cell to witness a pressure bump we simply left it at full heat for ~ 1 hour. It seemed like that should be a pretty good amount of time, however, I have nothing to base that on since I’ve never done this before. We figured if we were spraying Sr during any part of that time it would mostly stay inside the cell, and the back of the envelope calculation we did for Sr transfer to other parts of the cell seemed pretty slow.

I set the cell to cool down right at the end of the day so we’ll see tomorrow if we managed to evaporate all of the Sr oxide. If not we have to open the cell up and redo the foil shields if we want to get it to work.

When I came back from lunch today, it was discovered that the window on the MOT had catastrophically failed. The glass was cracked from several points on the out rim extending toward the center and the ion gauge had automatically shut down to protect itself. We immediately closed the gate valve between the chambers, cooled down the ion pump, and vented the chamber with argon. I should mention that when I came in this morning the first thing I did was set the window, oven, and nozzle to cool in anticipation of putting the new heater on the oven so those were already cool.

When we unwrapped the foil on the heater we discovered that a previous group member had put the thermocouple on the outside of the band heater as opposed to between the heater and window so the window was likely hotter and maybe MUCH hotter than we ever thought. I’m guessing that the stresses of being over heated finally overcame the window given the way it had failed. I’ve had windows fail because of heating or cooling to fast before and never did the glass crack. In those situations the glass-kovar seal was compromised. For the glass to break like that it had to have been because the difference in thermal expansion between the glass and metal finally over came the tensile strength of the glass.

It seemed like we would never get that window off of the MOT either. After some serious pounding with a hammer the zero length adapter finally came off the chamber flange. I was able to then put that in a vice and separate off the window by pushing from the inside with a hammer and screwdriver on the gasket. The adapter was not damaged and we’ll reuse it.

We put a blank on with a viton gasket and pumped down the chamber again. With the ion pump back up to temperature the pressure in the chamber was only at 2x10^-6 T. Not good. Hopefully, this will be better tomorrow and we won’t have to bake the entire chamber again. Although, maybe it’s a good idea. Since the window was already exhibiting some signs of Sr-oxide coating from when the oven temp ran away I had the idea of leaving a cold blank on in place of the slower window while evaporating Sr-oxide in the MOT. We could then vent the chamber and quickly put on the window, resulting in a much thinner oxide layer to evaporate the second time. When we do that we’ll be able see how long it takes to actually evaporate the layer.

It would probably be a good idea to bake out the whole chamber (except for the blank) when we evaporate the oxide now that I think about it. I am going to calculate how much Sr we want to load the oven with since I didn’t put in very much at all the first time and we’ll make sure we have what we want in there before we dive into all the work.

May 19th

Weight: 207.4 lbs.

Total Inches: 67”

The loss in weight was not surprising given the previous day’s fast. I suspect it was mostly water weight from getting dehydrated. I expect a significant gain in weight tomorrow and you’ll see why in a minute.

Breakfast: 2 pieces of bacon, 2 egg whites and 1 egg.

Lunch: I cheated a little at lunch without getting my heart rate up first. I had a handful of chips and even though I ordered a delicious seafood and chicken soup it did have some rice in the broth. I managed to choke down one of the corn tortillas with the soup and had Italian dressing on the salad. I actually remembered to take a picture this time… although I didn’t remember right at the top of the meal.

When I got back to the lab after lunch I discovered that the window on my trapping chamber had catastrophically failed, and I mean that in every sense of the word. The postmortem pointed to a STUPID mistake that a past member of the group had made when they installed a heater on that window. I’m not usually an emotional eater, but there just happened to be a package of these

sitting in the lab at the time. I couldn’t even tell you how many of them I ate. It might easily have been half a dozen. It was enough that I felt physically ill. In fact, the only reason I gagged down a protein shake for dinner was simply to get the protein. I’m still ticked that I can leave the lab for a few weeks in the summer and literally spend almost a year fixing all the crap that happened while I was gone.

Research Update May 18th

While I’m on here updating every day I thought I might take the time to keep notes on daily happens on the experiment so that I can keep track of things as they happen. This is really for me and I’m not going to try to write or explain things in a way that others would better understand. So if you’re one of the few people who have absolutely so little to do every day that you come to find out how fat I am and what I’ve eaten, feel free to skip these posts and don’t feel like you missed something if you decide to read them and things don’t make sense.

Today, I installed the 2” cartridge heater on the vapor cell. This time I put a thermocouple on the lead end and let the lead end protrude from the insulation ~1/16”. On top of that it required a fan in order to run the heater with the right temperature gradient across it. With the windows at 380 C and the valve at 400 C I was able to get the sheath to 640 C while the lead end was still 265 C (thanks to the fan). The termocouple gauge never read any pressure rise most likely because the differential pumping with the long tube on the valve was to large. However, the windows very suddenly coated in soot. I was worried that this might have permanently attacked the window, but as soon as I vented the cell with argon, most of the soot was swept away. I didn’t have a chance to clean the window yet, but I’m assuming whatever is left will wipe off. I will find out tomorrow.

Either way this poses a serious problem for the operation of the cell. Every time the cell is vented, even with dry Argon, some thin oxide layer will recover the Sr and the process will have to be repeated, recoating the window. I ordered a second CF tee today in order to operate the cell more along the lines of a short 6-shooter, with the tee containing the cup on one side with a blank and the valve and the windows on the opposing tee. We could have lots of cold spots for the soot to collect when evaporating the strontium oxide and then still heat the windows to run more like a vapor cell in the long run.

In the meantime, I’m going to attempt an idea I had based on an Sr ampule I came across. The ampoule contains clean Sr with an indium cap. Once the ampoule is in or connected to vacuum, the indium can be melted (~150 C) and the Sr can then be heated to whatever temperature produces the desired vapor pressure. I was thinking we could use a similar idea to protect the windows while evaporating the Sr oxide. By tacking a sheet of lead or indium onto a copper gasket, we could protect the windows from the evaporated oxide and then melt the shield when we’re ready.

Indium foil would have cost ~$100 per window, but I could buy purified lead from Chemstocks for ~$1/lb. Initially, I attempted to melt the lead inside the copper gasket. I finally succeeded at this by taking a band heater tightened on a stainless steel blank and placing the gasket and a piece of lead on the back side of the blank. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to get a thin sheet of the molten lead to spread across the inner area of the gasket due to the surface tension created by a constantly forming oxide layer on the molten lead. In the end I ended up filling the whole area with lead the thickness of the gasket. I didn’t wet very well to the gasket either because of oxidation.

However, I then had the idea of pounding out the lead into the thin foil I would want. Dallin suggested we could then simply tack the foil onto the gasket with a soldering iron, avoiding completely oxidizing the gasket while making sure the lead staid well enough for installing the window. This is the first thing to complete tomorrow.

Otherwise, the pressure in the MOT continued to come down (slowly). I’m worried about the operation of the ion pump and I wonder if what’s really wrong is that we accidentally got parts of the magnet above its Curie temperature during the initial bakeout. It’s hard to tell without buying a spare magnet. I now have the new band heater for the oven and might attempt to evaporate the strontium oxide in that chamber if I have time tomorrow. Frustratingly, the 922 nm laser was behaving very finicky when I turned it on today, and was having trouble running stably at different master diode currents despite good optical feedback. I also think that coupling to the cavity has decreased, most likely due to some bumping around with I insulated the ion pump to re-bake it. I’m getting nervous as I’m running very short on time for having a cold ion source in time for August graduation. Here’s hoping for significant progress tomorrow.

May 18th

Weight: 209 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.25”

It feels like I might have plateaued seeing as how I have had significant weight or inch loss in the last week (besides after binge day which I don’t count). I suspect I might see something tomorrow, however, since I fasted today for man in our ward who got extremely ill suddenly. Dinner was amazing, but in my hunger I neglected to take a picture of it. Steak marinated in red cooking wine, garlic salt, and pepper cooked to medium rare on the barbeque broke the fast. It was accompanied by the green beans and spinach. Dessert was sugar free jello and a hot chocolate. I was surprised how not-hungry I was today, even without biking (due to the rain).

May 17th

Weight: 209.2 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.25”

It never ceases to amaze me that I either see a difference in my weight or in my inches, but it seems never both on the same day. Very weird. No biking today because of the rain.

Breakfast: 2 pieces of bacon, 2 egg whites and 1 egg. Plus a hot chocolate. I used to think that I was making my hot chocolate really dark, but this morning it tasted super sweet to me. In fact, at times it felt like all I could taste was the agave. Katie too has gotten more sensitive to sweets and now puts in half as much agave as she used to. No picture.

Lunch: Chicken with navy beans and rotel. Today I cooked the chicken in lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, butter, and Frank’s hottest buffalo sauce. It was amazing. It’s my new favorite.

Dinner: Rotisserie chicken with spinach and green beans. I love cooking the spinach and green beans this way. The green beans are simmered until mostly done. Then I add olive oil, butter, garlic, salt, and pepper and start adding the spinach. After all the spinach has cooked down I let it simmer for a few minutes. After I plate it, I sprinkled some balsamic vinegar over it. Heaven.

Dessert: Sugar free jello. What else? I really hope I don’t get sick of this. I’m really enjoying it.

May 16th

Weight: 211.8 lbs.

Total Inches: 67”

Even though I lost no weight from Saturday to Monday, this morning I was already back at my low for total inches from last week. I found that extremely weird. There’s no reason I can see that should be the case. Anyways, it was a protein shake and 2 egg whites with 1 egg for breakfast.

I forgot to take a picture of lunch. It was 4 chicken tenders with half a can of navy beans and rotel. I have to say the navy beans were REALLY good. Much better than I expected. So of course, I had to start singing the Lunch Lady Land chorus.

Dinner was a double-double protein style with chopped chilies and grilled onions and 1 slice of processed cheese. I might have snuck a french fry and a sip of my daughter’s Neapolitan shake .   Dessert was sugar free jello with whipped cream and 2 tbs. of almond butter.

May 15th

Weight: 211.8 lbs.

Total Inches: 68.25”

Not surprisingly, binge day did my body good. Needless to say, I wasn’t very hungry Sunday morning. Breakfast and lunch both consisted of a protein shake. On my lunch shake I gave it a nice dollop of whipped cream, partly to avoid throwing it out and because I was getting hungry and figured I needed some calories, but mostly because it tasted fabulous. Donuts were passed around in Elder’s Quorum on Sunday, so I did partake of the “holy fodder”. Dinner was steak with a baked potato (sour cream and butter), muffin, and pudding for dessert. I failed to take pictures.

May 14th Binge Day

Weight: 209.4 lbs.

Total Inches: 67”

Sorry for the delay. That is if anybody besides my sexy wife is reading this (she already knows what’s going on). It’s harder to post on the weekends and it’s also harder to take pictures of everything. Although, I don’t think I did too bad. I really like doing a cheat day on Saturday followed by a cheat meal on Sunday evening. I’ll just post the pictures of everything I ate on Saturday and you can use your imagination as to how much of anything I had . I will point out, however, that the sandwich is known as a “Kallie” as it was inspired by her. Bear in mind that I have not liked peanut butter sandwiches of any kind for years. Since I was a little kid, but this sandwich is SO good. How to make it? Butter 2 pieces of homemade bread and spread natural peanut butter on one side and natural almond butter on the opposite. Then put down a thick layer of sliced strawberries and slather it in clover honey. I’m already looking forward to next Saturday for another one.

Plus, I had a protein shake in the morning and a homemade hamburger for dinner.

May 13, 2011

Weight: 210.6 lbs.

Total inches: 67”

Another stasis in weight with a significant total inch loss. Very weird. I really wasn’t going for gaining muscle at the same time, but that seems to be what is happening. Even though I’m not eating any more or less than last week I’m starting to feel like I’m eating too much sometimes. In fact, the only time I start to feel hungry is if I miss eating when I normally do.

Breakfast: protein shake with 2 egg whites and 1 egg. I was going to only have the protein shake but since I was making eggs for others I had some myself.

Lunch and Dinner: Adobada with refried beans and guacamole. I had half the plate for lunch and half for dinner.

Dessert: hot chocolate with whipped cream.

Excited for carbs tomorrow.

May 12th, 2011

Sorry for the delay on this post. Blogger has been down. I’m sure they did it just to build your anticipation in following my diet drama day by day. What will you do if it ever happens again?!

Weight:  210.6 lbs

Total Inches:  68.25”

Even though I’m not surprised by the increase this morning I can’t really say why either. I just felt… heavier. There’s no real reason to have expected it either, so I’m assuming it’s just a normal fluctuation in body mass. Also, I didn’t do my measurements first thing when I got up for the first time either. I also didn’t eat breakfast right away which I’ve been pretty consistent at.

Breakfast: 2 egg whites with 1 egg and a protein shake.

I forgot to bring my camera to lunch. I got my heart rate up first so I didn’t mind enjoying a cream cheese wonton, an egg roll, and few bites of my rice ball. Along with that I had Spicy Pad Pen: chicken with vegetables (We’ll include bamboo as vegetable I guess. I’m not sure what it is technically.)

After biking home I had a few bites of Kallie’s food invention: a strawberry and peanut butter sandwich (they are incredible), as well as half of a piece of garlic bread and bite of watermelon. Dinner was baked chicken in Frank’s hot buffalo sauce, green beans, and kidney beans with rotel. Topped off, of course, with sugar-free jello. And yes, I put a dollop of whipped cream on it this time.

I should mention that most days I have a spoonful of peanut butter after lunch and most nights I have a couple tbs. of almond butter before I go to bed.

May 11, 2011

Weight: 109.8 lbs.

Total Inches: 67.25”

I was completely unprepared to see no weight loss with a significant decrease in total inches over the course of a day. I’m really not sure what that means. I did 5 reverse pull-ups and 20 pushups last night, but I’m pretty sure that’s not enough to offset any amount of fat with muscle. I’m actually not trying to increase muscle at this point but I’m feeling more energetic and so I’ve started doing Ab Ripper and pull-ups/pushups on alternating days.

This morning I just wasn’t that hungry so I had a protein shake which I forgot to take a picture of. I biked to school for the first time this week due to the rain and for the first time I did not have a small “cheat” snack prepared for after my ride. I feel like I really paid for it. My body really got used to some small sugar or carb after biking last week I guess. It got worse because I had to bike home again before I ate lunch.

Lunch: leftover tri-tip and spinach/green beans with white kidney beans and rotel.

I ate it so fast I was a little sick. Later in the afternoon we got some “lab snacks” from Thorlabs. I snagged the trail mix. Usually, I’ll get my heart rate up before I cheat but today I simply savored the couple of M&Ms and raisins that hid amongst the nuts.

Tonight, Katie was super sick so I took the kids to McDonald’s for dinner. Is it weird that they were playing romantic 70’s songs including a selection from Barry White at McDonald’s? Anyways I stripped the skin off of 2 chicken nuggets that the kids failed to eat. I was surprised by two things: the chicken inside the nugget had “grains” and was a solid piece of chicken, and the nugget tasted better without the breading. Afterward I picked up my dinner at Rancheritos: machaca with double beans and guacamole. It was already getting late for me to eat by the time we finished with the kids and then I had to wait even longer because they initially made my order with double rice. By the time I got to eat I was so hungry I wolfed the whole thing down really fast. Not only is one plate there too much food for me, the speed with which I ate it exacerbated my post consumption experience. I almost threw up. I did, however, do squats and jumping jacks prior to eating to take care of the cheese. Boy, was it worth it. One thing I always miss terribly is dairy. We’ll see if my off eating schedule and slight cheating affects stats tomorrow morning.

End of Day May 10, 2011

After I got home I had a bag of peanuts and a couple pieces of celery with Adam’s peanut butter on them.

Dinner was a santa maria marinated tri-tip with sautéed spinach and green beans. The tri-tip was spicy and succulently dripping juice. We combined two separate recipes in order to cook the green beans and spinach together and they were absolutely delicious. Dessert was, of course, sugar-free jello. I don’t know what it is about eating this way, but for the first time in my life I like jello. It was always just so-so for me and I used to absolutely hate the sugar free kinds. I don’t know what’s changed but that little bowl of sugar free jello at the end of the day really does it for me. I feel like I eat it as if I were in a jello commercial: savoring each spoonful, rolling it around in my mouth, exploring the texture as if it were fine dark chocolate. Ok, now I’m weirding myself out. Enjoy the pic.

May 10, 2011

Weight: 209.8 lbs.

Total Inches: 68”

I was surprised at the weight loss this morning. I’ve noticed as time has gone on that I feel less hungry and I pretty much eat on a regular schedule because I know that I’m supposed to. If I wait long enough I do get hungry, and I’ve noticed that getting my heart rate up whether or not I hold it there tends to make me feel hungry. Energy hasn’t been an issue and I haven’t been eating any differently than the 1st week so I think it was mostly due to adjusting to a new diet.

Breakfast: 2 pieces of bacon, 2 egg whites, 1 egg, zucchini, and tomato.

Lunch: Black beans with rotel and leftover tri-tip steak. I love that pre-marinated tri-tip from Costco! (no sugar or other no-no’s in the ingredients)

End Of Day May 9th

 

After donating blood I had a 5.5 oz. orange juice and a packet of trail mix whose only contraband constituents were raisins and dried cranberries. For dinner it was a tri-tip roast with a spinach, zucchini, and tomato salad. Sugar free jello topped off dessert.

Tonight I attempted to get through a session of Ab Ripper X. Um, I’m not sure of whether or not it counted as exercise, but I’m absolutely positive I’m going to be regretting it tomorrow. My post P90X body would be kicking my but right now for letting myself get back into this kind of shape. All is not lost, however, my blood pressure today was 120/82 and usually when I’m at this weight it’s 130/82. I expect it will drop again as I become more active.

May 6th–May 9th

Alright, the weekend really threw off my food log. But no fear. My stats for Friday morning were:

Weight: 210.6 lbs.

Total inches: 68.25”

I did not take any pictures of food I ate on Friday unfortunately. I had a protein shake for breakfast, chicken and beans with rotel for lunch, steak and vegetables for dinner, a couple of Dr. Peppers (not diet), a couple of smores, a chocolate chip cookie or two, and maybe a chocolate donut or two.

Saturday I ate like a pig and couldn’t hardly even stuff down a taquito for dinner. It was binge day so I didn’t take a real sharp mental note of everything I ate, but it did include 2 jumbo polish dogs from J-dawgs . Anyway, Sunday I did better except I cheated at dinner. I did not take any stats over the weekend.

 

May 9th

Weight: 212.6 lbs.

Total Inches: 68.5”

The weekend was not such a big hit on progress as I suspected it might be. Breakfast this morning was 2 pieces of bacon and 2 egg whites plus an egg.

Lunch was beans with rotel and steak.

I am donating blood today, so we’ll have to see how that goes. I’m not sure whether I should risk some sugar intake immediately after donating to help get blood generation back up. Hmm. I’ll post evening consumption later.

May 5th, 2011

Weight: 212.4 lbs.

Total Inches: 68.75”

I’m finding it difficult to feel like I measure my inches in a consistent manner and I’m not sure they mean much unless there is a significant difference over time.

Breakfast: A cross between scrambled eggs and a frittata made with the left over griddle chili.

Morning Snack: This morning after biking down the hill to work air started hissing from my tire so I booked it back up the hill as fast as I could to try to make it home without having to walk. Afterward I treated myself to a handful of berries.

Lunch: Chili verde with refried beans, a small salad, and guacamole. I also had a handful of chips with salsa.

Snack: I’ve found that nuts are a great afternoon energy boost and buying them in single serving sleeves from costco has been a great way to make sure I don’t eat too many of them at once.

Dinner: I really wasn’t hungry for dinner but I figured I probably had better get in my protein. I opened a can of Progresso Wild Rice and Chicken and strained out the rice, then I washed it down with a protein shake and a hot chocolate. Instead of mixing half and half into the hot chocolate I topped it with a dollop of whipped cream. Maybe the hot chocolate was a mistake but it sure tasted good. As of this morning I’m down a little over 2 lbs. which I think is a pretty good rate of weight loss for a week so I don’t feel bad indulging in something like a hot chocolate a couple of times a week. I’m starting to think that come Saturday I just physically might not be able to binge they way I was salivating about on Monday.