Abstract
During the Summer of 2019, my group and I set out to set up and test instruments for a new Soft Condensed Matter Lab. My focus was on setting up and testing a set of Optical Tweezers. Our optical tweezers use a near infrared laser to trap a small silica bead for manipulation in a medium. This medium can be organic or inorganic and the goal is to characterize its viscoelastic properties. This can be helpful in studies of biofuels, biological environments, and biomedical science.