Orion Crest, Series_1

Chapter 40: The Bottleneck

          "...... Here is the main place where we do our experiments, the Fourier infrared spectroscopy analysis of the samples is done over here, and there is no need for you to participate in the specific experiments, you only need to help us analyze the experimental data and that's enough. In a moment, I'll have someone vacate a table for you, and from today on, you're a member of our research group!"

　　Saying that, Bob pushed open the office door.

　　To the left of the doorway, a polytechnic man in a T-shirt was sitting with his back to the door of the lab, manipulating an instrument that looked similar to a printer, and didn't notice that someone was coming.

　　Bob walked over with Orion and tapped the man on the shoulder, and when the man looked back, smiled and continued.

　　"Let me introduce - this is Matt."

　　"Hello Matt!"

　　This Matt looks a bit straight, or mute in face, not as talkative as Bob.

　　Simply look up and down at Orion, he said, "You are the ......Orion over at the Mathematical Institute?"

　　"Exactly." Orion said with a smile.

　　Matt nodded and said, "Can you use Matlab?"

　　"A little."

　　"A little is enough," Matt nodded, picked up a USB stick from the table and handed it to Orion, "The literature you need to read, and some introductory tutorials are all in there, including the application we wrote to apply for the grant, reading these things will give you a preliminary understanding ...... By the way, remember not to spread it to the Internet."

　　Although various universities are mostly co-operating in the field of scientific research, the competition between each other is also not small. Whoever gets it done first, then the results will be theirs. It was also for this reason that many project leaders, the first thing they did when they woke up every day, was to search their own topics through various channels to see if any of them had been first.

　　"Just these?" Orion, who was holding the flash drive, asked.

　　"That's all for now, new samples have just been delivered and I haven't done the data collection yet, it's too late today, I'm going to work on it tomorrow." Matt said as he rubbed his nose in it.

　　"Where did you do that FTIR spectroscopy data collection?"

　　"Right here." Matt pointed at his feet.

　　"Here?"

　　Orion looked around and didn't see any really impressive lab equipment.

　　At least, not comparable to a couple of labs next door.

　　"That's right," Matt nodded, pointing to the instrument on the table that looked suspiciously like an old printer, "that's what's being used."

　　"That's it?!" Orion stared at the instrument with some disbelief, not really feeling like it could be associated with anything cutting edge.

　　"That's right," Matt nodded, as if guessing what Orion was thinking, and continued, "TENSOR-II Research Grade FTIR Spectrometer, this instrument was custom-made by our lab from Bruker in Germany. Built-in gold reflector, reflectivity is 6.5% higher than aluminum mirror. It has super anti-oxidation and more stable optical performance. Dual-channel digital acquisition, four external output optical path expansion ......"

　　Orion listened to his explanation with a confused look on his face.

　　Although he had read some reference books on materials science during the summer holidays of his freshman year, they didn't cover anything this specific.