Reflection: 2011 Summer

My summer has finally come to an end. Tomorrow, I'll be headed back for college, where the classes of my third semester will start next Wednesday.
All in all, it was a great summer. I was able to participate in a really fun internship at NIST for 12 weeks. I was able to hang out with friends a lot. I was able to spend a lot of time with immediate and extended family during the two weeks after my internship ended. And this last week, I was able to relax quite a bit. Now I can't wait to get back to college and meet up again with friends from last year, start my classes, and start my first in-college research opportunity!

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Reflection: 2011 Summer at NIST

I've mentioned a few times here that I have been interning at NIST this summer. Well, after 12 weeks, today was my last day, and for the next 3 weeks before I go back to college I get to chill out and bum around at home with family and friends. Yay!
I am really, really happy that I got to be able to do my internship this summer. It almost didn't happen; it wasn't until a few weeks before I started that I got confirmation that I could start in the first place. (That's better than my 2009 summer internship at NIST, where I didn't find anything until a few days before I started.) Thankfully, it all worked out in the end, and for the first time, I got paid too! Yay!
Last time, I was working on random stuff regarding reflective surfaces. I enjoyed this one more because I feel like LEDs are more relevant to and more popularly talked about in the discussion about energy conservation than is reflective roofing; this has become especially true with all the debate about the bill that would outlaw the sale of lightbulbs below a certain energy efficiency level. (That bill did not pass in the end, but it did bring LEDs into the spotlight of national attention.) The other reasons why I enjoyed this internship more were that in this one, I got to work in the lab more, I had more coursework background (for obvious reasons), and this internship was much more structured than the last one, where I basically did random data analysis here and there every few days and that was it (along with going to the lab 2 or 3 times in all the 8 weeks of the 2009 summer). This summer, I was able to rigorously detect problems in some of the equipment we were using; these were not manufacturing defects but were fundamental issues in the design of the equipment, because these machines, which I would use to maintain individual chip LEDs at a stable set junction temperature by altering the forward voltage and the temperature of the variable heat sink upon which the LED would sit, would often report that the heat sink was hotter than the LED at low (~<100 mA) currents, which made no sense. I was also able to develop an algorithm for removing flicker from existing LED lamp data. Finally, I got to play around with a spectroscope measuring properties of LEDs inside an integrating sphere.
I doubt my supervisors will read this, but I want to thank them (again) for letting me experience this awesome opportunity. But after that, if you'll excuse me, I have some relaxing to do. Woohoo!

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LEDs: A Chicken & Egg(ish) Problem, For Now

Yesterday, I read a Yahoo! Finance news article (Gwendolyn Bounds, Wall Street Journal) about the current alternatives to incandescent light bulbs, given that the US will phase out sales of incandescent light bulbs by 2014. I also read some of the comments, many of which griped about the high costs of alternative lighting solutions and complained about government intrusion into their choice of light bulbs.

The story caught by interest because my work at NIST now deals directly with LEDs, and while LEDs have their benefits, they have their problems too. Some of the benefits include huge efficiency gains over comparable incandescent and even compact fluorescent light bulbs, as well as a much wider variety of applications. In addition, unlike compact fluorescent lights, LEDs have no mercury, so there is no toxicity risk associated with LEDs. However, there continue to be issues. One is that because LEDs (and this is true of fluorescent lights as well) do not produce light through heat like a blackbody (as incandescent lights do), the "warmth" of the LED's color can come close to but will never match that of the incandescent light, and this bothers many consumers; related to this, both LEDs and fluorescent lights exhibit flicker, which can be noticeable and irritating at some voltage frequencies. Another is of course that while compact fluorescent lights are now competitive price-wise with incandescent lights, LEDs are still relatively quite expensive (4-5 times more expensive than a comparable alternative); hopefully prices will continue to drop, and hopefully that happens soon. Adding on to that previous point, the efficiency gain of LEDs over comparable compact fluorescent lights is quite a bit less than the gain of the latter over incandescent lights, meaning the overall higher efficiency doesn't quite justify the higher price. Finally, there aren't yet good standards governing how to measure various technical specifications of LEDs.

This is why I'm excited to be working at NIST. At NIST, I'll be helping in at least a small way to test various LED components and make better LED standards. I'm also looking with other people into ways to eliminate flicker and improve both efficiency and color quality. Finally, I hope that all these efforts also result in cost reductions over time.

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Featured Comments: Week of 2011 May 22

There was one post that got a couple comments this past week, so I'll repost both of those.

2011 Summer: First Day at NIST

Reader somethingquarky responded, "Science! And, beer!"
Commenter Znurre said, "My vacation is starting June 13. I don't really have any plans other than taking it easy. This will be the first free days for me since I started working after graduating about one year ago :)"

Thanks to those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I will have at least one review as well as a related article out. Remember, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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2011 Summer: First Day at NIST

My summer break started last Thursday, and this summer I'm working at NIST again. Today was my first day, and it was alright; it wasn't great only because orientation took the entire day, and it was kind of boring. That aside, I finally found out what I'm working on: I will be measuring the efficiencies and color qualities of various commercial LEDs (and hopefully progress from there). This is also my first paid internship, so that's also exciting.
To readers: has your summer started yet? What are your plans for the summer?

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Nearing the End of Second Semester

My second semester at MIT is nearing its close. I have turned in my last final problem sets of the semester (mostly — one remains to be seen), and I've finished all my exams, including the last exam (there is no exam for that class during the week of final exams) for my probability & statistics class. I've mentioned that class before, and since then, it's only gotten harder, so I'm glad to be done with it now.
I'm excited that I have less than two weeks until summer starts! This summer I'm interning at NIST again, so that'll be exciting.

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