K-State Wildcats vs. Stephen F. Austin

On Saturday we went to an American Football game. The K-State wildcats were playing against Stephen F. Austin. It was the first game of this season. 52,820 people went to the Bill Snyder Family Stadium to see the match. 

I’ve never seen a football game before. It was very interesting, but I think 3 ½ hours are kind of long for an actual play-time of 1 hour. The game was followed by big fireworks.

To see a video I took during the half-time show, click here.

Bill Snyder Family Stadium 

Kansas City - Worlds of Fun

This weekend we did a trip to Kansas City. First we visited the World War I museum and then we went on to the City Plaza where we found the Cheesecake Factory – a good place to eat thousands of calories by just ordering a dessert.

Kansas City

The Cheesecake Factory

Kansas City

The next day we decided to go to a Theme Park – Worlds of Fun and Worlds of Ocean. It is a combination of Theme and Water Park.

World of Fun

HITS beam time and trip to the Cosmosphere

Last week we had beam time with the more powerful HITS laser. 

HITS

HITS

HITS

The problem was that the laser is too far away from our set up. We aligned the beam through 3 different rooms. Unfortunately we lost most of the power due to the long beam path. Furthermore the beam arrived at our set up with an elliptical shape and strange modes.

The "manipulation unit" was no longer
attached to the "movement stage"

On top of that we couldn’t move our grating anymore. For some reason the manipulator for the “movement stage” fell off. Thus we had to vent the chamber and open it to fix the stage. We decided to cancel our HITS beam time and thus gave it back to other groups.

Next beam time we are going back to the KLS laser.

Besides the bad news, we finally had a free weekend with no beam time. To use this opportunity Daniel, his roommate and I went to the Cosmosphere. It’s a museum about rocket science and space flights.

Cosmosphere

Cosmosphere

Cosmosphere

Cosmosphere

Cosmosphere 

Cosmosphere

KLS beam time and birthday cake

Last beam time we had some issues with the grating. We couldn't move it anymore, because an aperture blocked it. Thus we had to open the chamber and remove it. Besides some more issues, we made at least some progress and collected some data to optimize the setup.

J.R. Macdonald Laboratory

An aperture blocked the grating

On Wednesday Stephanie and Daniel prepared a cake for my birthday. After eating the cake with some friends, we went to some bars in Aggieville.

Daniel and Stephanie prepared a birthday cake

My birthday cake

Our next beam time starts on Monday. One week later we are probably getting “HITS” beam time to use much higher intensities. KLS was not powerful enough to investigate the molecular processes our supervisor wants to see.