A brief bit about my field site using only the thousand most common English words

To say a lot with a little is harder than you may think. 

Words are important, but what if you only had
a small number of known words with which to speak?

Chris Trivedi (right) and Graham Lau (left) at Borup Fiord Pass in 2014.

The Up-Goer Five Text Editor, created by Theo Sanderson, is a web-app that challenges you to type using only the one thousand most common words in the English language. It's intriguingly far trickier than you may think. I gave it a go, in an attempt to explain the reason that my colleagues and I went to Borup Fiord Pass to conduct our field research in 2014. What d'ya think?

On the top of the round world where we live, lies a land with ice and cold. In this land there is a piece of ice, long and thick, and covered in a color that does not seem right in such a place. This color let us know that something important was on or in or around that colored ice. We went to that place to find the colored ice and learn more about what made the color, to learn about why this place is just so cool. In the ice I found something important about fire's friend in the book of one god. This friend of fire as spoke upon before, was to be found in new forms within the ice, and of this I wrote with my friends. Now we know more about the stuff that causes the colors of the ice in that land with ice and cold that lies so far to the top of the round world where we live.

This Thing is Older Than Your Mom!

On May 13th of this year, I had the honor and the pleasure of competing in the Famelab USA science communication competition's national final. 

Famelab allows early career scientists and communicators of science an opportunity to improve their skills through educational workshops while also competing against one another by giving short (3 minutes or less) speeches using no slides and, at most, one prop. For this year's final event, I gave a speech titled "This Thing is Older Than Your Mom", where I talked about my favorite meteorite from my personal collection and about how old some of the materials in meteorites can be. 

Delivering this talk was another step along the way for me to build a career as a communicator of science. I fumbled a bit on the Q&A session of the event, but it was still a lot of fun and a huge learning experience. For the two days leading up to the final event, we were given a masterclass to develop our skills led by the magnificent Malcolm Love.

I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to share some of my knowledge with a wider audience through Famelab. If you're interested, you can see the other talks I've given before at Famelab events by checking out the page they created for me.

Where in the World is Graham Lau?

I've been travelling and doing so much lately that I haven't been keeping up with my blog. Last week, I traveled to Washington D.C. to compete in the Season 3 national final of the Famelab USA science communication competition. I didn't win the competition, but it was so much fun and I learned a lot more about sharing my passion for science and knowledge with other people. Here's a pic of me on the stage during my final talk, titled "This Thing is Older Than Your Mom":

I took a much needed stop back in Pennsylvania to see friends and family after that. It was refreshing to hit up the ol' stomping grounds again. Here's a pic of my little sister, Kelsey, and I, along with my long time buddies Nick Ison and Ben Doyle:

Sadly, I only had one day back in Boulder after all that travel before leaving on my next trip, a stop to the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Canadian Light Source (CLS) is a synchrotron particle accelerator where researchers can use the x-rays produced for a wide range of scientific endeavors.

A panorama looking down at the ring of the CLS synchrotron

My lab mates, Jena Johnson and Julie Cosmidis, and I use the Canadian Light Source to do something called STXM. STXM stands for Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy. The technique allows us to use x-rays to produce nanoscale to microscale images of our samples and to collect spectroscopic information about the materials. For instance, we're using STXM to figure out what kinds of sulfur and carbon molecules are in our samples and how those sulfur and carbon molecules are related. I'm currently sitting in a lab at CLS preparing more samples for our last evening of experimentation and data collection. 

A scanning transmission x-ray microscope at CLS

Tomorrow, it's back to Boulder for a good week of rest and catching up on work before I head off on the next adventure: the University Rover Challenge (URC). The URC is a three-day robotics competition held in the desert of Utah, where undergraduate university teams compete against one another with robotic rovers that they've designed and built (usually over the course of an entire year). The event takes place in Utah to simulate a robotics competition on Mars. The teams will use their rovers to look for signs of life, to assist astronauts in their work, to perform maintenance or servicing tasks, and to scout out terrain in the desert environment. I've been to the URC many times, serving as a volunteer and Director of Logistics. I always learn a lot about robotics and have a great time seeing these teams in action, but I also love the back-breaking work and camping out in the desert. Here's a picture from the Cornell Mars Rover team, showing off their Ares rover from last year's competition:

Hopefully, after I return from the URC, I'll have some serious time to get deeper into writing up my dissertation. It's scary to say it, but I'm looking to wrap up my Ph.D. program late this year, so there's a lot of work ahead making all of that happen. However, sometime in June I'll be coming back and writing posts about all of these adventures I've been on and sharing the best photos and videos, so stay tuned!

Ad Astra Per Aspera!

Enjoying A Clean Shave and a Haircut at The Rook and Raven Pub in Saskatoon (no, I'm not shaving off my beard. But I am enjoying a fun drink made with Kraken rum, cola, Guinness, and hibiscus syrup. Yum!)