I served in the Advanced Research and Creativity in Honors (ARCH) Program as an intern/assistant to a Ph.D. student where I collected and sorted experimental data. The thesis for the experiment was that a combination of laser and piezo sensors can accurately detect structural faults within steel samples.

 

I created a rectangular grid with several columns of marked points and through the computer, imposed it over the sample. A piezo was epoxied onto the steel surface and a sine sweep signal was sent through it via a signal generator.

 

A laser was then used to focus in on every individual point one at a time. Sometimes the laser would be off its mark on where it was supposed to focus or the software program would detect noise, so corrections would have to have been made. Once the measurements from the graphs were recorded, they were saved and organized by the day and by their assigned point number.