Senior Dakota Shields finishes never before discovered research.
Major- Nanoskills Science with an emphasis in physics
The Research:
Shields’s research began the summer after his freshman year of college when he declared his major of Nanoskills Science with an Emphasis in Physics.
The research was called Photoionization. He and Dr. Himadri Chakraborty, Northwest research advisor, researched theoretical models. They made it using computer programs and math, and what it modeled was called Buckyballs, also called indofulureans. Shields conducted this research for experience and his future career in Nanoskills Science.
“You have this cage of carbon that looks kind of like a soccer ball, there are 60 of them and then inside you have a halogen or a noble gas,” Shields said.
They found that when the electrons swirled around them and were close enough to interact together it was called hybronization. The electrons had character wave functions of both the halogen and the shell with very different wave functions.
“So you put them together and then you hit them with light,” Shields said. “Well you model hitting it with light, giving enough energy for it to bounce out of their state and that’s called photoionization. So we modeled a cage and a molecule inside of it and then how it reacts to light.”
They found that it did in fact have a weird character whether it was bonding or antibonding of both the shell and the halogen.
“Our goal wasn’t to do anything big picture, it was fundamental science. We’re trying to test for the value that you wouldn’t find in some textbook somewhere,” Shields said, “We were looking for what’s called: not like, ‘oh we are going to save the world’ but we made this model and this is what they do.”
The goal:
“Our goal wasn’t to do anything big picture, it was fundamental science. We’re trying to test for the value that you wouldn't find in some textbook somewhere. We were looking for what’s called: not like, ‘oh we are going to save the world’ but we made this model and this is what they do.”
The most exciting part:
“One week I couldn’t get the d orbital argon and at one point I tried one more random value and so I tried .03. because I was doing .1, .2, .3 so i decided lets go real small and do .03 and it takes forever and after like four hours it finally went through and that was just like a wave, I had finally gotten this last orbital. But other than that i would say making a model mathematically and being able to apply that into a real situation to publish and take to confriences to say, ‘Hey this is my work, no one else has really done this kind of calculation before and here is our density functional theory’, it feels good.”
Quotes from Dr. Himadri Chakraborty
What was it like working with Dakota on this project?
"Reasonably satisfying. Dakota learned the basics of computer codes, computations and graphing software pretty quickly. Also while running the codes for new fullerene molecules he used common sense, made smart decisions, and troubleshoot often on his own. It is always a joy for a research supervisor to see a student gradually taking controls on the work."
How would you describe Dakota as a student?
"Very hardworking with a lot of perseverance and tenacity. Dakota takes his work seriously, but without getting stressed out. Such level headedness is quite a precious temperament to be successful in competitive science research."
How proud of him are you?
"I am very proud of Dakota. Dakota contributed very significantly in this research project he was involved in. A large part of the computations was performed by him single handedly. While almost all research results Dakota obtained were presented in the American Physical Society conferences, only a part has been published so far in highly competitive peer-reviewed journals with Dakota being the lead author. The remaining results will easily form another paper of similar caliber. Such an accomplishment is awesome for an undergraduate research student."