Summary June 17th, 2014

Today went by pretty quickly, I can't believe it's almost time to leave.
I spent almost the majority of my day working through a tutorial for a program called VMD. VMD, or Visual Molecular Dynamics, is a program that allows biological systems such as proteins, nucleic acids, and other things of that nature to be viewed computationally instead of in a lab. Some of the things I learned from this tutorial was how to load a molecule onto the program, manipulate its drawing method, coloring method, its opacity, and how to move the molecule around using different mouse controls. I also was refreshed on some coding language that I began to learn last year and learned many new terms such as "$x set beta 0" which sets the beta value of the selected molecule to 0, and "set sel [atomselect top""] which allows you to select a specific part of the molecule.
I haven't only been working on the tutorial, though. I was also given a paper to read and annotate as I went through it. The paper is titled "Understanding Ionic Liquids at the Molecular Level: Facts, Problems, and Controversies" and the title pretty much sums it up. It is about Ionic Liquids, which are organic salts at 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), and what they're used for, their characteristics, and basically everything else I need to know about this. My project this year is based on IL's, so this paper is extremely helpful and I am probably going to reference it at more than one point in time for help.
Today was pretty eventful; time flies when you're occupied and learning, I suppose!