Karaoke Television
July 24, 2016

This sunday we spent most of the day relaxing and cleaning our apartments. Thankfully the apartment was given to us with a few cleaning supplies including a mop and broom set. Later in the day we planned a night out at a karaoke television place located at a mall nearby, and we invited Long and his friends to come join us. We met up at our apartment around 4:30pm, and we took a taxi together to the mall. The KTV place had opened very recently, and it was well decorated and had a modern look. After we checked in, we were escorted to a private room with a table and karaoke setup as well as a small stage to sing on. The display had both chinese and american artists to our surprise, so we broke the ice by singing “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. Pretty soon everyone had loosened up, and we all began taking turns singing popular songs. We sang many classic hits such as Linkin Park's “In the End,” Taylor Swift's “Love Story,” Nicki Minaj's “Anaconda,” and Celine Dion's “My Heart Will Go On.” Long and his friends also sang a lot of chinese classics including one opera song that had all of us laughing and singing along. It turned out to be one of the most fun nights we have had in Shanghai so far. The venue also served food, so we had dinner there after we sang our hearts out. After dinner we said our goodbyes and made our way back to our apartments.

Trip to a Traditional Chinese Village
July 23, 2016

Today Long arranged for us to join a tour group to visit a traditional chinese village. Since the village was about three hours out, we had to leave for the metro bright and early at 6:00am to make sure we caught our bus. The drive to the village was nice because the bus was roomy and had air conditioning. Once we arrived, we left the comfort of our air conditioned bus and stepped into the hot and humid air to enter the village. The clouds we had seen earlier this week were gone, so the sun was heavily shining down on us throughout the visit. First, our tour guide took us through many buildings with rooms detailing antique furniture used in the past. We also saw a few exhibits detailing traditional chinese life and culture as well as the common clothing used in those days. There was a river running throughout most of the village, and there were a lot of stone and wooden bridges built to compensate for it. The homes and overall architecture of the village was beautiful. Many of the homes also had mini docks that villagers could use to access the river on their own boats. For lunch our tour guide brought us to a restaurant located on the second floor of a market place. The restaurant was very homey, and we had beggar's chicken, bok choy, and tofu for lunch. After lunch we headed down to the docks for a boat ride through the river. The boat ride was very smooth, and it took us under bridges through most of the village and brought us back to the village entrance. We spent the rest of the time exploring and checking out the local markets. As beautiful as the village was, by the end of the day we were all excited to get back to the bus' air conditioning. However, on our way back the unthinkable happened; the bus' air conditioning broke. Soon after the bus began to heat up quickly, so the bus driver decided to drop us off at an earlier metro station instead to avoid the discomfort. Nevertheless, we made it back home safe and sound with our souvenirs from the village.

Middle School Q&A
July 22, 2016

Today at the research institute we were given the opportunity to speak to a few elementary and middle school students. Two of the girls were in elementary school, and one boy was about to enter high school soon. The students had a lot of questions about our school life during and before university, so we shared our experiences about school and our school system back home. It was interesting to learn just how different our school schedules are; an average school day in China lasts from about 7:30am to 5:00pm. Sometimes students might even stay at school later to self study for exams as well. We also talked about our hobbies, what we all liked to do for fun, and we asked them about what aspirations they had for when they were older. We ended up chatting for about two hours, and we took a group picture with the students before they left. Afterwards, the team decided to take the subway to a huge mall we visited earlier at the Bund. The Bund looked much prettier in the evening because of the colorful lighting from the surrounding buildings. We ended up having dinner at a japanese restaurant where we had sushi, tempura, and miso soup.

Troubleshooting
July 21, 2016

The weather has been playing games with us lately. Although it seems as if it is going torain at any minute, there has not been any rain so far this week. Today in lab, Dr. Lou put together a relay circuit to conduct additional error tests on the oscilloscope. This circuit was considered to be better at testing both negative and positive voltages, but we began experiencing unexpected results from the start. Initially, Dr. Lou thought there may have been a short or other damage on the circuit, so we delayed the testing until after lunch. After Dr. Lou constructed a new relay circuit, we still experienced a lot of noise on the oscilloscope as before. We noticed that the DC source was outputting more noise than usual; this was perhaps due to the workers next door who had their power tools plugged into the wall. We agreed to finish the testing another day without the workers presence.

Team MOSFET Update
July 20, 2016

Another day another mosquito bite. We have been combating mosquitoes since we arrived in Shanghai, but none of us have managed to escape their wrath so far. Itchy and sweaty, we made our morning trek to the research institute to continue our lab work. After two weeks of testing the breakdown voltage and threshold voltage for seven mosfets in the oven, Christine, Guthrie, and Crystal started to test for the capacitance of the mosfets. There are three capacitances that were to be measured: the gate-to-drain capacitance, the gate-to-source capacitance, and the drain-to-source capacitance. After measuring for the capacitance, they graphed the relationship between the capacitance and the voltage. During lab time we noticed the air conditioning unit was not cooling the room as well as before, so the professor had a few workers take a look. Thankfully, they said they would have the air conditioning running smoothly within the week.

Dinner with Dr. Li Shen
July 19, 2016

Although the sky seemed cloudy and gloomy, we were lucky to have another rainless day. We have now developed a morning routine for lab days at the research institute. Before we head over to SHRIME, we meet up earlier at the bakery to grab a snack before work. We have now become regulars at the bakery, and the staff there have learned to greet us in english anytime we stop by. Today at the research institute, Dr. Lou had Samson and I conduct a series of time sensitive TLP tests on a zener diode. We wanted to figure out possible causes for the error in the oscilloscope by comparing test results both for when the oscilloscope is cooled down and when it is warmed up. On the other hand, Crystal, Guthrie, and Christine test for the relationship between the drain-source current and drain-source voltage. They vary the gate-source voltage and drain-source voltage where the oscilloscope showed the changes in the current. Afterwards, Dr. Li Shen tried to install the Agilent software on their computers but they encountered a problem in which the software was not able to be installed. During lab time Dr. Li Shen mentioned how he wanted to treat us for our hard work, so he invited all of us to join him for dinner this afternoon along with one of the assistant students from our lab. We kindly accepted and had dinner together after work at a new restaurant near our apartment. The restaurant was very nice, and for dinner we had many foods such as duck, shrimp, tofu, and fish.

Back to the Lab
July 18, 2016

It seems that the sunny weather is here to stay for a while as we woke up to another day with beautiful weather. It was sunny and surprisingly not humid; it was a lot like the weather from back home. For breakfast today we went to the bakery for some breakfast croissants, and afterward headed back to the lab to continue our projects. Having finished testing the first IC we received, Samson and I were given a new IC to test which took us the entire day. Unlike the last time we encountered a lot more problems testing the IC; we were getting a lot of unexpected behavior for particular pins. It turned out that the IC was actually damaged, so Dr. Lou provided us with another duplicate IC to continue our TLP testing. After work we returned to our apartment and lather gathered for dinner at a restaurant near our apartment. We ended the day with ice cream at our usual desert spot.