Lab Stories
Category archives for Lab Stories
The Making Of “Optical Control of Ultracold Collisions”
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 5, 2008 One of the things I’d like to accomplish with the current series of posts is to give a little insight into what it’s like to do science. This should probably seem familiar to those readers who are experimental scientists, but might be new to those who aren’t. I think that this is one of the…
Peer-Reviewed Egoboo: The Metastable Xenon Project
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 4, 2008 I’ve been slacking a bit, lately, in terms of putting science-related content on the blog. Up until last week, most of my physics-explaining energy was going into working on the book, and on top of that, I’ve been a little preoccupied with planning for the arrival of FutureBaby. I’d like to push things back in…
True Lab Stories: Fire Safety
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 17, 2008 Typing up the demolition story reminded me of another before-my-time NIST story. Again, the statute of limitations has run, so it’s probably safe to tell this. As mentioned in the earlier post, it was very expensive to get the official facilities team at NIST to do construction work, so a lot of things used to…
True Lab Stories: Demolition Men
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 15, 2008 This is actually sort of a pre-lab story, as it happened before my lab in grad school was even established. It pre-dates my time at NIST, and happened long enough ago that the statute of limitations has surely run out, so I feel safe telling it. The lab I worked in in grad school was…
True Lab Stories: The Oaf Effect
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 11, 2008 It’s been a while since I did one of these (see “How to Tell a True Lab Story” for an explanation), but yesterday’s laser tech story reminded me of one. The lab next to mine in grad school also used an argon ion laser to pump another laser, but they were much more cramped for…
True Lab Stories: Why I Am Not a Biologist
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 14, 2007 Every now and then, usually in the summer or early fall, when the sun is shining and it’s just pleasant to be outdoors, I find myself almost regretting my career choices. After all, had I chosen a career in the biological sciences, rather than laser physics, I could do my research outside in the nice…
True Lab Stories: Evil Professor Tricks
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 20, 2007 A week or two ago, one of my students measured the power output of a grating-locked diode laser, and came into my office saying “I think I may have killed the laser.” The power output was much too low for a laser of that type, which is a bad sign. So, we went down to…
True Lab Stories: Fun With Materials Science
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 27, 2007 It’s been ages since I posted a True Lab Story, mostly because I’ve been too busy to do anything really dumb. I had a good day for True Lab Stories yesterday, though, so here’s a tale of something idiotic I did, or, rather, had my students do. I have a student working on a project…
True Lab Stories: Death of a Laser
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 7, 2007 So, what’s the deal with last night’s silly obituary? Basically, the main laser in my experiment died because I’m a jackass. More specifically, the laser in question is a diode laser, similar to the kind found in CD and DVD players. These are broadly tunable, available in a wide range of powers and wavelengths, and…
True Lab Stories: Boris the Magnet Guy
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 7, 2006 The story about Bloch oscillation gravity measurements reminds me of a True Lab Story about a different sort of sensitive measurement made using cold atoms, made during my grad school days. Sadly, this one wasn’t particularly useful… The standard technique for accumulating large numbers of cold atoms is a thing called a magneto-optical trap, which…
