My Lab
Category archives for My Lab
Dorky Poll: Cleanliness is Next to…?
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 30, 2007 Via Kate, a story from a legal blog about a decisions in the case of a messy professor: “Clean your room or get out!” Words from a frustrated parent to a messy teenager? Not quite. The mess-maker in this case was a chemistry professor at the University of Texas, who ignored repeated warnings to clean…
Experimental Physics for Complete Morons
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 28, 2007 Today’s lesson: Lead bricks are really heavy. That is all. Carry on.
Low-Tech Lab Essentials
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 8, 2007 There are a lot of high-tech tools that are absolutely essential to the functioning of my lab. The diode lasers I use are a couple hundred bucks each, and only available from a handful of companies. I’ve got a couple of digital oscilloscopes that are really impressive instruments, packing a huge amount of signal-processing power…
My Least Favorite Part of Academic Research
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 17, 2007 My least favorite part of academic research has to be waiting for vendors who aren’t actually going to call me back. Even when it’s a company I’ve done a lot of business with, “a lot of business” by my standards is peanuts to them, so I’m way, way down the priority queue when it comes…
How to Clean a Mirror
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 20, 2007 Let’s say you have a mirror– not some cheesey $2 makeup mirror, but a research-grade aluminum mirror– and it has some crud on it, say a film of junk deposited during your Summer Institute for Hot MEtal Chemistry. Like, say, the mirror on the right in this picture: How do you get that mirror clean?
Summer at ACME College
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 6, 2007 “Ahhhh… summer at last. No more classes. No more committee meetings. Do you realize what this means?” “Ummmmm…. no. What does it mean? What are we going to do this summer, Brain?” “The same thing we do every summer…. Try to do PUBLISHABLE RESEARCH!!!” ———— “Are you pondering what I’m pondering?” “I think so, Brain,…
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…
Small Victories
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 22, 2007 Here’s my achievement for the week: OK, that may not seem like much, but this is what it looked like before I started:
Good Stuff Going to Waste
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 24, 2007 Somewhere between yesterday’s posts about uselesss junk and useful antiques, there’s this. The picture to the right is a tragedy in progress, though is might not look that way: It’s an FTIR spectrometer left behind by the previous occupant of my lab. It’s a top-of-the-line instrument, a Bomem DA-8 spectrophotometer, and a new one will…
Dorky Poll: Useful Antiques
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 23, 2007 As sort of a counterpoint to the previous entry, here’s a more positive poll question: What’s the most useful antiquated tool you keep around? That is, what dusty old relic do you keep around because there’s no modern alternative that works as well for what it does?
