Unsteady flows in materials processing such as crystal growth could reduce the quality of the final product. In this series of convection tests, crew members drew down the volume of silicone oil in the experiment chamber to create a concave surface. As a laser gradually heated the surface, team members were able to identify the transition point where oscillations began to occur in each run. Crew members initiated another Lewis Research Center investigation, the Colloidal Disorder-Order Transition experiment. This Glovebox study researches what happens at the boundaries between solid and liquid states during crystallization of a colloid.
Colloids are suspensions of finely divided solids or liquids in gaseous or liquid fields.
For instance, paint, ink and milk are colloids found in everyday life. Thornton worked Sunday with the Geophysical Fluid Flow Cell Experiment, which models fluid flows on Earth, planets and stars. Investigators hope to one day use information gleaned from experiments such as this to aid in forecasting ocean flows and weather patterns. The science team is currently working a problem relaying scenario temperature parameters to the experiment hardware, but Principal Investigator Dr. John Hart says they are getting good data. The cadmium zinc telluride crystal is just over a third of the way through its growth in the Crystal Growth Furnace.