Soft Matter Theory Group, Tufts University, Medford, MA
My internship with Professor Tim Atherton’s Soft Matter Theory group at Tufts University placed me in a theory laboratory concerned with the physical properties of materials that walk the line between liquid and solid. As a collaborative effort between Professor Kate Jensen’s lab at Williams and the Soft Matter Theory group, I spent the largest portion of my time investigating a silicone called Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS).
At the start of the internship, Tim assigned me a training project to get my math abilities up to speed. The work I would later be doing relied on variational calculus, a technique I had never heard of. I spent the first week of the internship trying to mathematically model the shape of water droplets as they dangle from a surface before falling. This initial training project forced me to become competent with both the machinery of the new math I was learning as well as the software used to implement it. I received a short introduction to variational calculus from Tim, as well as some help along the way from the Ph.D. students in the research group, but largely I had to come to an understanding of the math by reading textbooks. This was something I had never done before and while slow and often frustrating, was a valuable experience. During this week, I also increased my savviness with Mathematica, the computer program of choice for the kind of modeling I was doing. The first week was an introduction to more than just the tools of the trade. It also made me painfully aware of the difficult and slow-moving nature of theoretical physics.
Soon after, I was baptized to the style of work that would be expected of me, the theoretical and experimental sides of the collaboration met to discuss and organize at the New England Complex Fluids Workshop. I came away from the meeting with plans to begin modeling the behavior of PDMS observed in Professor Jensen’s lab. Her lab group had been producing high-resolution images of small drops of silicone gel in contact with glass surfaces as well as the reversed scenario: glass beads on a silicone surface. In our inter-laboratory discussion, we decided to focus my efforts on modeling the former scenario. I was put into contact with Williams undergrads doing the experimental and imaging work and prepared myself for a lot of math and computation.
After the first team meeting, Tim became harder to contact due to a travel-heavy schedule littered with grant proposal due dates. Because of this, my interactions with him were limited to email and weekly face-to-face meetings. Now my work was much more independent: fulfilling the tasks set out at the weekly meeting without Tim’s direct guidance. I was still able to ask the surrounding graduate students for help, but more often than not, they found the problem just as difficult as I did.
My first task was to check the existing scientific literature for any previously devised models that I could adapt to my system. Being able to sort through academic papers is an important skill to have in graduate school; unfortunately, I wasn’t able to hone it very well. After I turned up no helpful material, Tim and Kate simply did the looking for me and found what I needed. Armed with a theoretical framework and a working knowledge of the modeling software, I got to work finding a mathematical model for the shape of the adhered droplets. The process was psychologically grueling: model building is a creative endeavor and I am not a creative person. This was furthered by the models’ high failure rate, which often required me to start over from the very beginning. This continued until the end of the internship, but with every failed attempt I became more familiar with the limitations of the software and the finer points of the problem. I made slow but real progress. UMass Amherst’s soft matter conference was approaching, which coincided with the end of the internship and my last day of work. This was quite helpful, as I was slated to give a short talk about my work at the conference. Thankfully, I had some real results to present, which placed a neat capstone on my internship.
During the internship, I found it easy to imagine myself applying to a physics Ph.D. program, especially like the one at Tufts. The work, while hard and often frustrating, was rewarding. I felt that I was actually contributing to something that may, one day far in the future, have a positive impact on medical devices and other technology. It was also intellectually satisfying to solve problems that were not yet solved. It was like solving a puzzle, but one in which every solution I came up with was a unique intellectual product. The research was the portion of a Ph.D. that I wasn’t sure about, (I already know that I enjoy learning physics) and this internship gave me a taste of it. I would also like to try my hand at experimental research to see if I prefer that, but I found theoretical research rewarding enough to consider a pursuing a doctorate.
The people at Tufts were great to work with. The Ph.D. students were kind and helpful. Aside from asking them questions about software and math, I also asked them about graduate school itself. They explained the process of application and graduation, as well as the employment options that a Ph.D. in physics makes available. They were pleasant to work with, and if they represent the prospective physics Ph.D. population as a whole, I would be very happy with my classmates if I were to enroll in any Ph.D. program. My positive opinions of Tufts personnel extend to the faculty as well. Tim was an excellent advisor and I look forward to collaborating with him in the future. Despite his very busy schedule, he was still in digital contact with me almost every day that he was out of the office. When Tim did make appearances in person, he took time to catch up on my work in detail, make suggestions, and provide encouragement. He also helped solve any math or software troubles I was having, going so far as to troubleshoot my code line-by-line on multiple occasions.
The most influential part of my internship is the long-term opportunities that it has made available to me and to other Williams students. This internship is the first step in an ongoing collaboration between Tim and Professor Jensen at Williams, so I will be able to continue my work in her lab during the school year. This will give me the chance to try out the experimental side of research work and continue my attempts to solve the silicone problem. As the collaboration moves forward, there will be chances for other Williams students to work with Tim at Tufts and hopefully for Tufts students to work at Williams. Eventually, the work I have done this summer with Tim may lead to a collaborative academic paper on silicone adherence, meaning that I will have contributed to the lexicon of scientific knowledge as well as placed an import milestone on my graduate school applications.
Finally, I want to thank everyone at the Williams ’68 Center for Career Exploration and the alumni sponsors who made this venture financially possible. I’d also like to thank Tim Atherton and the condensed matter graduate students for hosting me, and Kate Jensen whose cooperation made the collaboration a reality.