An American in Provence

Most of you probably don't know this, but Alain has his PhD.
In what? Physics.
What is his research on? Stuff.
I am pretty sure he is the smartest person I know.
He has as a goal "Win Nobel Prize".

All I can say is, thank goodness there are people in the world who really get excited by the movement of atoms and nucleation of crystallized ions and all that baloney.

His two favorite things to do on a weekend morning:
1) Go to his motorcycle classes
2) Sit at the table and do pages and pages of equations, chemical formulas, phase diagrams, and sketches of silicon lattice structures.
My two favorite things to do on a weekend morning:
1) Nothing
2) Drink coffee and eat a croissant.

I keep a pile of scrap paper ready for when he is overcome by an urge to calculate the second derivative of a logarithmic equation so as to better understand the movement of electrons in a phase 2 silicon-germanium structures, or some other such nonsense. The problem is that afterwards we have pages and pages of unintelligible scribblings sitting around the living room that I don't know what to do with. I'm scared to throw them away, in case the next E=mc^2 is in there, but if ever he does want to find a particular page again, it will be quite difficult as there is no rhyme or reason to them. I just smoosh them up into a pile once a week or so and throw them in a cabinet.

Occasionally he will ask me something along the lines of "Do you remember the thermodynamic coefficient for the transition of a solid state amorphous quantum dot?"
Honey, first of all, it's 8:30 on a Sunday morning. Second, I studied that stuff like 8 years ago. And third, I haven't had my cappuccino yet. Can you check back in a few hours once I have had time to wake up and flip through some old text books?

At any given time, our living room table has one of the following books sitting on it:
- Fundamentals of Microsystems Packaging
- Electronic Materials and Devices
- Introduction to Conventional Transmisson Electron Microscopy
- Crystallography
- Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials
- Introduction to Statistic Thermodynamics
- Hybrid Microelectronics Handbook
- High Resolution Focused Ion Beams
- Physical Metallurgy for Engineers
(most of these are mine by the way, and I paid a boatload to have them sent here from the US)

I get a kick out of him because he will be busy doing equations and then look up and ask me stuff like "What's eight times six?" Um, that I think I know the answer to!
Lately I have had to ban math equations while we are eating dinner. I can just see me in about ten years telling our kids "Why can't you complain about having to eat your broccoli like a normal kid instead of doing math during dinner? Stop it right now!"

I have tried to teach him that when well-meaning relatives ask him how his research is going, they don't want the 45 minute PhD-defense version. They want the dumbed-down 5 minute version. When their eyes start to glaze over and cross alternatively and their responses consist of 'umm?' 'hmmm.' 'hmmm?' 'uh huh' and 'uh?' that means that the most they are understanding are the the's and's and I's.

He usually asks me to correct his scientific articles. Mostly the grammar and spelling, but also to see if the article is understandable. After five years of doing this, I have discovered that it is pretty much like a Scientific MadLibs.
Want to sound like you too have a PhD in Physics? Are you a researcher stuck for ideas? No problem!
Just do the following (all words/phrases taken from his articles):

noun1: Transition, Diffusion, Control, Segregation, Separation, Influence, Morphological evolution, Auger spectroscopy, Crystallization, Epitaxial growth, Fickian diffusion, Surfactant mediated growth, Biaxial stress, Thermodeposition
preposition: of, in, on, from, to, within, across, after, among, at, below, between, by, into, near, upon
adjective: amorphous, anomalous, self-assembled, crystallized
noun2: silicon, germanium, SiGe, atom, ion, electron, dopant, islands, Si(001), Si1-xGex/Si(001) substrate, grain boundaries, atom sites, heterostructures, quantum dot, thin films, lattice, nucleation sites
verb: using, during, trapping, implanting, growing, measuring

Then put them in the following order:
noun1 preposition adjective noun2 verb noun2 preposition noun2
For example:
- Transition from anomalous silicon islands during epitaxial growth of SiGe heterostructures
- Segregation of self-assembled germanium islands using Fickian diffusion of grain boundaries
- Morphological evolution within amorphous Si(001) measuring electrons within thin films
- Auger spectroscopy on crystallized quantum dots trapping nucleation sites

See? There is nothing to it! You don't need to have a PhD to do this.

Try it and give me, in the comments section, your best Scientific MadLibs Journal Article Title!

Libellés : Alain

Libellés : Trips

Once in a while, usually on Sunday afternoons while I am putzing around the apartment looking for something to do other than clean while Alain either works on the apartment or naps on the couch, I get an urge to cook.

Libellés : Cooking

A windy mistral day in Provence...
Waiting for the bus after work...
When suddenly, a window that had been left open in the building across the street slams shut, the glass breaking and falling down onto the street and sidewalk below...

Before I moved to Provence, I had heard tales of the legendary MISTRAL.
The wind that you can apparently blame everything on.
Late for a dinner party? Sorry, I got held up by the Mistral.
Go nuts and shoot your spouse? Sorry, but the howling of the Mistral drove me to it.
Forgot to do your homework? Sorry, but the Mistral blew it away.
Get caught kissing someone else? Sorry, but the Mistral just blew me onto to her/him.

According to Wikipedia:
The summer mistral
The summer mistral, unlike the others, is created by purely local conditions. It usually happens in July, and only in the valley of the Rhone and on the coast of Provence. It is caused by a thermal depression over the interior of Provence (The Var and Alpes de Haute-Provence), created when the land is overheated. This creates a flow of air from the north toward the east of Provence. This wind is frequently cancelled out close to the coast by the breezes from the sea. It does not blow for more than a single day, but it is feared in Provence, because it dries the vegetation and it can spread forest fires.

Before moving here, I had also heard tales of pioneer women in the US, left alone out in log cabin and going bonkers just listening to the wind all day long. I thought "that's crazy- that could never happen"
But after four years here, I can understand how it might happen.

Anyway, back to my story of the Rain O'Glass.

After the first pane of glass broke, I kept a wary eye on the slamming window across the street. Where is that darn bus?
Another crash! and the entire rest of the glass panel came crashing down.
A worker finally came and removed the now-empty window frames, but all the rest of the windows had been left open, ready to be slammed by the wind.

There were a few of us waiting for the bus, and we saw a group of people about to pass under the building. We were waving and yelling at them to not pass on that side of the sidewalk, but just at that moment a bus came by.
A man with a baby in a stroller understood something at least was amiss, so he crossed the street, but an elderly lady just stopped and stared at us uncomprehendingly. She finally moved on, probably wondering what those younguns were ahollerin' about.
Here is a lesson- maybe if a bunch of people are yelling and waving at you to move away, maybe you should move because maybe you are in the "Risk of Being Bisected" Zone. Don't stop right in the middle and try to figure out what is going on- move out of the way and then figure it out because you might be about to receive a shard of glass in your neck.

The worker (they are renovating the building) locked up and left, without securing all the windows. As he walked away, another window slammed and a pane of glass fell down onto the sidewalk and narrowly missed him.

Next time the wind is blowing, I think I will be very aware of possible danger from above.

Libellés : Provence

My first two summers here in Provence, 2005 and 2006, I thought I was going to die from the heat. When we went to Bretagne in August 2005, it was a relief- finally, a break from the heat.

Libellés : Provence