Week 1 Days 1/2/3

Day 1

I began by familiarizing myself with the programming language LabVIEW. I had done a little bit of programming before this, mostly in MATLAB and java. LabVIEW is very different than these other languages, in that it is a graphical (visual) programming language. Instead of the code being written, it looks like a circuit diagram. LabVIEW has several advantages over traditional programming languages is that there is no real compiler. Errors also tend to be easy to find as the interface won't even let you run the code if there is an error present, and shows you the error. I made several simple programs from a tutorial that introduced LabVIEW concepts. Such programs include one that determines whether or not to hire someone based on their grade, a conversion of a numbered grade to a letter grade, and a decision maker based on a machine's running temperature.

Fig 1: This is an example of the decision maker program. The top shows the front panel of LabVIEW, which displays the output of the code. The bottom is the block diagram, the code itself. For an input temperature and current machine speed, the code determines if the machine is running too hot. If it is not running too hot, it allows the machine to speed up.

Day 2

I continued my familiarization with LabVIEW by writing several programs that created a sine signal and then applied noise to it. One program filtered the noise out and produced a filtered sine signal and displayed both the unfiltered and filtered signal for the user. Another allowed the user to create an rms form of the sine wave and displayed a table of the rms measurements for the user. I also created a program which allowed the user to save data and selected data points of peak to peak measurements of the filtered sine wave to a text file.

Fig 2: This program creates a sine signal and then adds noise to it. The unfiltered sine signal is displayed for the user graphically in the front panel. The signal is then filtered and displayed for the user. The code displays a warning signal to the user for peak to peak measurements of the filtered signal that are above a threshold. The user also has the option to press a button on the front panel that allows them to save certain data points to a text file.

Day 3

I read several papers on the principles and design of a magnetic tweezers (MT) experimental apparatus. I discovered that multiple methods exist for the tracking of the beads used in MT applications. I also familiarized myself with the physics behind MT.