Dinner in Davis

Mike and Nicole are preparing to move to Boulder Colorado. Nevertheless, they invited us for dinner. They are both good cooks and the pasta with meatballs, salad, and strawberry shortcake were delicious.

After dinner, as Mike tried to explain to us what he would be researching at his new job, he came up with this demonstration to increase understanding. He sprinkled amaranth (a type of grain) onto water, the grains self-assembled, then a pattern developed in certain places which might be called hexagonally-packed. Mike will be studying proteins and how individual molecules adhere (or don't adhere) to different surfaces, then will write a computer program to analyze the results.

Or at least, I think that's what he explained. You could see Mike thinking very hard about how to bring this information down to a level where non-scientists could understand.