I have nothing to say other than that it is great to be back in the lab with a new group of students 🤓

It may have been a long summer of moving and maintenance but I am super happy about my bright and cheery new office! ☺️

If you’re attending #ACSFall2021, consider checking out the brand new CHED session, “Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry”, with talks from 2:00 - 6:10 on Wednesday, 8/25. I’m giving my first ever ACS talk in this session, and I’m super pumped!

The Thompson group is so proud of researcher Jade Casasent who knocked her REU out of the park this summer - winning best poster presentation (out of nearly 100 entries!) from the 2021 UNL Summer Research poster video conference

And just for good measure, here’s the gang again at our end-of-summer dinner. Feeling all sorts of excitement about all that we’re going to do in the coming school year and beyond! 🧪🖥🔬

Here’s a time lapse of the lab in action - prepping the infrared chamber, popping in a sample, and looking at what we made with glancing angle spectroscopy.

These students crushed it on lab and instrument set-up. We’ve got a contact angle goniometer, we’ve got a thriving hood space, we’ve got optics in place for doing glancing angle spectroscopy, and we’ve got a QCM for tracking protein deposition on SAMs. ✅

Been way too silent this summer because research is way too fun, but now that I have a breather it’s time for a big ol’ #appreciationpost for all that our group was able to accomplish! For starters, just look at this fantastic group of young scientists!

Anyone else get peeved when they do trivia with friends & the “science” questions are all naming random elements from the periodic table and everyone looks at you expectantly like well you’re the chemist?? I know like 20 elements on a good day don’t pin this on me

Also anyone else feeling betrayed by how much you now identify with the MOST curmudgeonly character in every piece of kids media???

Can someone please explain to me why, in addition to retreating to a spooky mountain, the grinch’s first move post-Whoville rejection was to stop wearing clothes entirely?

Can’t say enough good about @explainevrythng - works perfectly for annotation during class, filming quick problem solving vids, office hours, etc. Also loving my theme notebook from @CognitiveSrplus and obvs using a ton of @mujiusa pens.

Them: It must be so nice to have a winter break!! Me (running out of whiteboard room 2 minutes into making this list):

today I googled “dog psychologist” to find a calming picture of a dog in glasses to use for tomorrow’s stern but empathetic talk about study habits in gen chem. we’ll see if any of these pups do the trick.

Hoarders: lab edition