So I'm 11.5 months into my 1 year thesis on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). In short, I'm trying to measure something called the Hamaker constant (H) by generating Frequency Response Curves (FRC's). In the first 4 months of my thesis, I was zooming ahead - I'd derived from scratch an analytical approximation of the FRC - something no one else in the history of AFM had done before! And I had numerically proven that it works using a 1970's software called AUTO. I was getting increadibly optimistic about my Thesis and was even expecting to graduate very early! But alas, AFM is a cruel mistress.
My final task was to perform FRC's experimentally - a task that should really only take a week at most. It's been 7 months and I still haven't gotten any good results. The culprit? Bad equipment! Every time I set up my experiment, my results fall apart like an ice cream melting in the sun. At least for the last 4 months I've been meeting my professor weekly telling him about these difficulties, but I'm only met with a frustratingly optemesitc "just be patient and continue doing experiments". Why would such an intellegant professor be so closed minded? Because the student before me working on this AFM had produced stunning, amazing and beautiful FRC's using the exact same equipment. I gotta agree, they were very good... suspiciously good.
And so here I am, stuck on an endless loop to get empiracle data using a machine that won't work. I feel as helpless as the Russian scientist sent to the roof of the Chernobyl power plant.
