4/17 and 4/24

On 4/18, Dr. Bellis was out in Denver for a meeting, so our internship was canceled.

On 4/24, I got nasal allergy and had to cancel the meeting because of my intense running nose. Fortunately, the allergy went away just before Honors Convocation started, and I was able to receive my award without sneezing. :)
Dr. Bellis and I communicated via e-mail after the ceremony. We made some corrections to my poster. :)

5/1: Poster Presentation!!! Dr. Bellis will be coming to see the posters and tour around the campus.

4/10 Plotting Ting's Data, SUCCESS!!

Rather than inputting all the data by hand into Processing, is there an easier way to do it?

The answer is yes, as long as you have the data saved somewhere in your computer or on a URL. 

My project today was to find out how to tell Processing to call up data just by inserting the file name that contains the data points we want my simulation to plot. Dr. Bellis sent me a tutorial of a code called loadStrings() which I can use to input the data to my plot. After looking at the code description (http://processing.org/reference/loadStrings_.html), I knew what I needed to do to successfully put the data in. I just had to save the data that Dr. Bellis sent me, change it into a .txt file, create a folder called "data" in my simulation file, and enter loadStrigns("ams_data.txt") in the codes I have for plotting a graph. However, I did all the processes that I just mentioned, but there continued to be an error saying that it cannot find a file named ams_data.txt. I was so troubled and tried doing the same thing many times, looked up other codes and similar simulations' codes, but still failed at loading the data to my simulation. I asked Dr. Bellis for assistance and he figured out that the reason that the computer could not find the file is because I created the folder name as "data " (with a space) and not "data". This difference cannot be seen with bare eyes when one clicks on the folder. Now I know the computer treats a word and a word with space differently, that's why my ams_data.txt could not be located.

 The simplest mistake can cause a long time frustration...

After successfully stopped Processing from saying "cannot find the file named ams_data.txt", we encountered another trouble. The plot only shows one dot instead of the many dots we have on our data file. This time, because I read other people code on uploading a .txt file to Processing, I figured out what our mistake was. We had our datapoints separated with spaces, but Processing can only read datapoints that are separated by commas. Dr. Bellis rushed up (because there were only 5 mintues left before I had to leave) and sent me another ams data file, this time, commas replaced the spaces in between the numbers. After all the incidents, we finally were able to plot the data points.
Here are the results: 

Our plot
(data points from the AMS experiment lead by Samuel Ting)
Codes: http://www.sos.siena.edu/~mbellis/ew_processing/ams_data_first_try.html

Official plot with same data
Generated by the AMS team
(notice the difference between their scale and my scale for the plot)

The shape of our plot and the plot made by the AMS team are very similar, they look slightly different because they use a log scale (which I haven't figure out how to do on my simulation).

Next week, Dr. Bellis will be going to Denver for a conference, so we will not be meeting. He will send me readings to read and work to do via e-mail. :)

4/3/2013 Plotting Continued

 I worked with Dr. Bellis on plotting during this meeting. Over the break, Dr. Bellis took the code that he and I worked on and simplified it even more. Now, the user just have to enter the equation and does not have to made extra changes to the codes. We also worked on how to input data points and plot them using Processing. We used the data from Samuel Ting's published report on AMS findings (see my previous post for more information on this topic) and plotted the first five points on our simulation.
Instead of drawing lines to form a graph, we drew ellipses (circles) to plot each data point.

Codes used for plotting data points:

  xpts[0] = 0.575;  ypts[0] = 0.0947;

  xpts[1] = 0.730;  ypts[1] = 0.0919;

  xpts[2] = 0.905;  ypts[2] = 0.0902;

  xpts[3] = 1.050;  ypts[3] = 0.0842;

  xpts[4] = 1.330;  ypts[4] = 0.0783;  

  plot.draw_data(xpts,ypts,color(255,0,0)); //instead of drawing equations we draw the x- and y- values. 

There are many things that we can do to improve this graph. We are thinking on how to autoscale the graph produced (we made our simulation able to auto-adjust the tick marks based on the size of the window the users want), but we have not figure it out yet. 

Dr. Bellis and I are the first ones to create graphing codes for Processing (usually it is used for art-related purposes, not science), so we are going to upload or codes to the internet and let more people know about this function and help us improve the codes. :)

For the next few weeks, I am going to start drawing graphs to present Dr. Bellis's thesis on Dark Matter. :) 

Dark Matter News Update- Not discovered

Yesterday, Samuel Ting presented the results that he got from AMS (mentioned in my previous blogs) and indicated that the information does not show signs of Dark Matter. Their results show that AMS has detected an excess of positron that may indicate the existence of dark matter (this is not the first time people find excess positron). However, the data are not conclusive enough, and the researchers need more time analyzing and collecting data for precise conclusions.
Other than the news that dark matter is not found, the data published indicate that the AMS experiment currently have the best set of experimental data, as you can see from the plot below. :)

To state dark matter has been found, the last curve will have to go down and to form a hill, but it doesn't. (This can be dark matter or pulsars) The data after the last point still need more analysis and samples, so they are not published or considered for the conclusion. 

Link to the published report and summary: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/40