Utah

Blog Post 4

10/21/2022

39O44’18” N 3O13’16” E

After a long drive through the arid and then surprisingly verdant stretches of Utah, we arrived at the campus of Utah State University, where we would stay at the student-run hotel. The next day, I would begin my internship with a surprisingly early wake-up time of 8:30. I know, I know, such a difficult thing to do… but I persevered.

I wandered through the campus for some time, trying to make sense of the map, until I finally found the chemistry building. After running laps around the building and finally meeting with the head of the chemistry lab, Dr. Leo, I was introduced to my mentor for the next week: Wenda Wu. Wenda cut quite a remarkable figure in black Nikes, pink shirt and pants, and a black hat—all covered by his lab coat. Wenda was a graduate student and PhD candidate working as a research assistant in the lab.

We first went down to what became my new favorite place on Earth: the college’s chemistry equipment supply shop. There were aisles of glassware, rows upon rows of reactantss and solvents, and of course, safety equipment, which is what had brought us there. I had a lab-coat fitting and left looking very dapper.

Wenda then brought me into the actual lab. Leo’s complex was broken up into two sections: the computer/office section and the actual lab. Thus far, I had only been in the computer lab, so as I stepped into the chemicals lab, I was arrested by the rows of fumehoods and the tables strewn with chemicals, beakers, and lab notes. Wenda ushered me to his own personal fumehood, with multiple beakers filled with all different brightly colored chemical, but instead of getting right to work, he wanted to give me some theory behind it all. He pulled down the glass front of the fumehood, whipped out hihs dry-erase marker, and began to give me a lecture about what the lab did. If we ever encountered a piece of knowledge I did not know, sometimes, we would go all the way back to the basics, so that by the end, I had a pretty concrete understanding of what the lab did.

Dr. Leo’s lab was working on discovering better, sustainable battery alternatives (batteries that require less toxic materials, can store more energy, and have longer lifespans). The specific battery type that Wenda was working on was called an aqueous redox flow battery, or ARFB. These batteries work on a simple reaction you see every day: oxidation. Whenever you see rust, for example, that is iron oxidizing. In certain circumstances, you could take that rust and reduce it back to iron. This oxidized-to-reduced-to-oxidized process is called a redox reaction (red, reduce; ox, oxidize). Everything has a state that it naturally wants to be in; one chemical might prefer to be reduced, while another might prefer to be oxidized. A redox reaction means that to move from one state to the other, the chemical must either gain or lose electrons. These ARFBs have one chemical that likes to be in a reduced state and another that likes to be oxidized, and they contain these chemicals in such a way that they do not touch each other. These specific chemicals oxidize and reduce when a current is applied; so, when you charge the battery, the chemical that prefers to be reduced oxidizes (and loses an electron), and the chemical that prefers to be oxidized reduces (and gains an electron). Those two chemicals now have an energy potential because they are in their nonpreferred states and want to get back to their preferred states. When you put this battery in a circuit to, say, turn on a lightbulb, the excess electrons from one chemical run through the circuit to the other chemical, reversing their states, making both chemicals happy, and powering the lightbulb.

As you might expect, it’s difficult to find a set of chemicals that like to oxidize and reduce, store up a specific amount of charge, can be suspended in water, and meet a whole boatload of other criteria. Dr. Leo’s lab works to synthesize chemicals and then test them in ARFBs to see if they could be the right ones.

We spent the whole week of my internship synthesizing one chemical set to test in an ARFB. Check out the below video to learn about the specific procedures that I mastered during my week synthesizing these chemicals in Dr. Leo’s lab.

Florence

N 12O19’52” E

Today is my last day in Venice, and tomorrow morning, I fly to Majorca, Spain to work on a vulture sanctuary, so stay tuned for that post. Today will be all about Florence, Italy. We arrived in Italy later in the night, so we caught a taxi—one, because there is very little other public transportation in the city, and two, because we did not want to wander around a city that we did not know well at night. Little did we know we were going to be putting ourselves in an even more dangerous situation by taking the taxi. Let me explain. Why do you think there are so many great Italian race car drivers? Because they get the most practice. They don't have to go to the race track to practice; they just have to drive to school, or work, or lunch. As we were driven to the apartment, we were pressed into our seats by the sheer speed of the driver tearing down the even-skinnier-than-Paris streets of Florence. It was a completely inhabited area with apartments, shops, and two-foot-wide sidewalks, but the speed limits were still around 50 miles an hour. Luckily, our Formula-1 cab driver was well versed in the ways of navigating near vehicular manslaughter, so we made it through with only a few Italian curses flung through our window and the blatant traffic offenders.

After a day of unwinding, it was finally time to meet my first teacher abroad. In this case, the teacher’s name was Renato Olivesteri, who is a master wood-inlay craftsman. We were given an address, and so against the desire of my teenagerly kind, I braved the wee hours of the morning to start the first day of wood inlay classes. Renato's shop was exactly how you would imagine it (insert picture): it smelled of rich exotic woods, old iron, and faintly of horse hooves. I was immediately enchanted by the smell of a truly used and loved shop, but even more so by the almost diminutive figure of Renato. His face is set with thick black eyebrows and dark brown eyes and a short salt and pepper beard. He is in his sixties and has been inlaying wood for the last thirty-ish years. He is working in the shop that his teacher used for his whole life, and his teacher’s teacher, and so on. The space is diffused with a weathered look. The workbenches are covered in a thick lacquer only use and time can provide, and the walls are hung with beautiful inlaid works, ancient tools, and some recognitions of Renato’s work. We hired a translator to be there for the first lesson because Renato said he only spoke Italian, but after a half hour, the translator said that we did not need her because Renato spoke enough English words, which he mixed with hand gestures, to get by. So, over the next 6 days we miticuly followed this process:

We took very thin sheets of wood-clad veneer and sandwiched them between two boards with the stencil of some winding flowers on top. Renato then brought out a tin full of very small nails which he had had a very hard time getting his hands on for, as with most dying arts, his specialty tools are becoming more and more difficult to find. I nailed the sandwich together in multiple places, and then the jigging began. I used a jigsaw to cut out each piece until the flower was an unsolved puzzle. I then took apart the sandwich and rearranged each piece until I had three flower designs, each with an alternating background: petal, collar, and stem. After securing the designs with scotch tape, we then painted the backs of them with an ancient glue made from cow skin, tendon, and bone. The next day, I removed the newspaper through sanding, and then I took more of the tendon glue (this time a more potent batch) and adhered the design to a block of wood. After yet more waiting for the glue to dry came the final step: lacquering. Renato said that on some projects, this step took him 50 hours. We did an abridged version of the process, but after four-ish hours of applying lacquer and Renato talking and saying that ‘for the time we had, it will do,’ and that was the greatest praise I will receive in my life.

I loved my time spent in Florence with Renato, but I also loved Italy. Maybe it was because of the hundreds of Renaissance art galleries along the crooked brick streets. Or maybe it was because of the hundreds of reliably delicious cafes, restaurants, and pizzerias. Or maybe it was because of the fact that one night, on our walk home, we heard opera coming from an old wooden door, and when we stepped inside, we were greeted with a beautiful, free opera concert in an old church. I truly cannot say, but I love Florence deeply and can't wait to return.

In other news I am posting along with this a whole ton of photos and videos so check them out under the Photos & Videos and Artwork Tabs

France 1

Blog post 2

10/4/2022

45O26’26”N 12O19’52”E

Suffice it to say, traveling has been a whirlwind. I have enjoyed every second of it, but I have been from one thing to the next so it has been very difficult to write. Finally, the fervor has died down and I am going to be in a slightly more calm rhythm, so I will take this opportunity to catch you all up on how thing have gone. Today I will cover my first impressions on travel and France, tomorrow will be Florence, Italy, and the next day will be Venice. In other news, before I get to France, I just uploaded a paper I wrote to the website under the Projects category named ‘A Treatise on Spiritualism.’ I recommend giving it a read. Now for Paris:

We started by waking up at 5:00 to drive to a small airport, where we were greeted by the nearly full moon and Orion waving us off from the sky. The first flight was a short one on a 6-person plane and took us to Denver. I was dead tired because I had gotten very little sleep the previous night, and once I was finally able to fade off, my friend called me and we had a deep philosophical conversation at 2:00 AM for an hour. This travel day was not going to be fun.

Before I knew it I was walking down the departure ramp into the plane and was hit with my first bit of culture shock: the flight attendant greeted us in French. After I was comfortably settled in my seatled I was ready to dive into the next nine hours of homework, books on tape, movies, and if I was brave, sleep. The only thing of note about the flight is that when the flight attendants brought out the dinner, I was surprisingly not repulsed but the meal, unlike its American counterparts. I was still in shock from the fact that I was actually leaving the country all year to travel the world and learn all I could, but I still understood that to some degree as I stepped off the plane, I would be entering a whole new world.

That is why when I stepped off the plane, I was surprised when there was no fanfare of trumpets or chorus of angels, there was only a small exit lane and a lot of signs in French. The mundane nature of everything was in the people working on their phones returning from just one more business trip, or the casual demeanor of the tourists waiting to return to the great US of A and lovingly reunite with their jobs, school, etc. This is not to say that traveling is not what I thought it would be—it is and more. But there was still a confusing feeling that I could not place; I struggled with it then and still feel now in a small amount, and I think it is predominantly caused by social media. It is weird to live in a world where with the push of a button you can see every corner of the planet, and you can go to a movie theater and watch your favorite celebrities go on adventures from country to country, but at the same time see generalizations of people from different countries because of their political views. The dynamic becomes them and us. So whether consciously or not, as you step off the plane, you are surprised not to be greeted by aliens.

After getting some of the philosophy out of the way, I can tell you a little about Paris itself. We first made a quick stop at the hotel which was directly in front of the Louvre. Then we went out to eat. Luck was on our side because right outside our hotel along the Seine was a small corner cafe with small wicker tables and ash trays in abundance. Maybe, though, we were not too lucky, because there was another corner cafe one block down, and another, and so on. I guess all stereotypes are not foolish, after all. We only spent two days in Paris, but in two days, I enjoyed some delicious Parisian food. (It is always weird for me to see food, even nice food, at prices under $15 because I have lived in Telluride, an overpriced ski town, and New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world. So to me, even the jacked-up tourist prices are a breath of fresh air.)

Besides the prices and profusion of corner cafes, there was one other thing that was very different from any previous experience I had had, and that was the roads and buildings. America is a young country that did not have a chance to build its infrastructure before the advent of cars, and Britain was severely blitzed by the Germans in World War II, so their roads and building are very modern. But in France, most of the building and streets can date back to the Renaissance and even earlier. This means that the streets are very narrow and winding as they were built for pedestrians and carriages. It chills my blood to see cars zip down these streets as bikes view along sing while people are making illegal traffic maneuver outages u turns and bikes make mischief through it all. If you can survive the deadly traffic I would highly recommend Paris.