Summer 2018: cheese!

It's been a long while since we've posted. But with such a fun, busy summer, we had to share all our updates. Although we said goodbye to Tess and wished her success in her future adventures, we said hello to many new faces. Nine (9!!!!) summer interns joined the lab: 2 undergrads visiting us from Brown, and 7 high school interns. A lot of ice-related fun was had by all!

But before we can start working with ice, we have to learn about cheese. Rheology lab got the students learning about stress, strain, and how to run a creep experiment. The three teams were assembled.

 All cheese was measured and stresses calculated.

And the experiments started. They make sure to capture the immediate elastic response by measuring the height of the cheese as soon as they apply the weight. And then they continue taking a measurement every three minutes or so to capture the transient and steady state. One student holds the timer, one measures with the calipers and calls out the height, and one records it in excel.

This year we tried to support the weights to prevent tipping. It worked well in most cases...but not all.