- Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes.
- Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes.
- Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot 137Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes.
- Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the computer: 20 minutes.
- Time between saying "What happens if you just click 'Cancel?'" and getting the computer working: 2 seconds.
- Time spent connecting the detector, amplifiers, and high-voltage power supply: 5 minutes.
- Time spent swapping connections around to find the right configuration: 10 minutes.
- Time spent trying to figure out why the Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA) on the computer wasn't recording a useful spectrum: 30 minutes.
- Time between asking "What does this switch do?" and seeing a useful spectrum: 1.5 seconds.
- Time spent doing a quick preliminary measurement of the Compton effect: 10 minutes.
- Time spent re-doing all the connections to move the detector closer to the electronics, because the cables don't reach: 10 minutes.
- Time spent jiggling the cables to the PMT in order to get rid of spurious noise peaks: 20 minutes (integrated over full lab period).
- Time spent looking for a working Geiger counter: 30 minutes.
- Time spent looking for a mouse for the data analysis computer: 5 minutes.
- Time spent looking for a different mouse for the data analysis computer, one that wasn't a useless piece of shit: 10 minutes.
- Time spent explaining the MCA calibration procedure to students: 15 minutes.
- Time spent re-explaining the MCA calibration procedure to students: 30 minutes.
- Time spent trying to get the MCA program display back to normal after students poked randomly at the keyboard for a while: 15 minutes.
- Time spent hyperventilating after students picked up the very expensive PMT, and waved it around like it was indestructible: 5 minutes.
- Time spent listening to student imitations of me saying, "Oh, God! Put that down!": 1,653 hours (projected).
- Time spent decompressing after the end of lab: 45 minutes.
- Time until I have to do all this again: Not nearly long enough.
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And now you have a procedure all typed up for when you have to do it again.
Lead is a danger to CHILDREN! You should be vigorously prosecuted, heavily fined, and your institution billed for the $millions it will cost for Haz-Mat to safely collect and dispose of the lead. Uncle Al bets there are nanograms of lead dispersed all throughout the building, necessitating its demolition inside a giant Teflex bag, which will thereafter be encased in reinforced concrete - with monitors.
Were there females, Blacks, Browns, gays, and cripples involved in performing the experiment? If not, you are in violation of Equal Opportunity, indigenous peoples, feminist, social activist, multiculturalism, Affirmative Action, anti-discrimination, diversity, and reverse discrimination statutes. Everybody (except Whites and Yellows) had better get an A. You will volunteer to attended and pay for 5000 hours of tolerance counseling.
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I don't know what's funnier, the article or the troll. Shine on you crazy diamond.
"Time spent hyperventilating after students picked up the very expensive PMT, and waved it around like it was indestructible: 5 minutes."
Today's students do seem to have little appreciation for the delicacy of expensive electronics. Last year I heard a prof explain to a grad student that she had destroyed his $35,000 pulse laser by turning its frequency higher than 10KHz which he'd specifically told her not to do. Her response was that she turned up the frequency so the trace on the o-scope would be brighter. I asked him why he let people like that into his lab. He said that they're all like that nowadays, and education is part of his responsibility.
When I was a kid, a professor told me that he would only let a grad student into his lab after he'd tested them by asking them who changed the oil in their car. While I was there he violated this rule. In addition to destroying equipment, it is possible to kill yourself in a physics lab, and this nearly happened.
But I think it's gotten worse since then. When I was young students could get their hands on extremely dangerous things to play around with. For example, you could purchase dynamite with a driver's license at the local farm and home supply. Nowadays it is all illegal and students live in a soft world of safe and indestructible things.
Oh man, I just did that experiment! Although mine included
Time spent not understanding the coincidence circuit: 1 hour
Time spent getting the coincidence circuit to work: 30 min
Time spent trying to steal working pre-amps from the other group: 20 min.
Fond memories. And I don't think I ever waved the PMT around. ;)
-one of Today's Students
Time spent reading the hilarious thread: 2 min.
Time spent ROTFL: 2 min.
Time spent reminiscing why assisting labs taught me to debug electronics really well: 5 min.
Time I'm going to spend tonight in night mares about being trapped in a student lab room: 8 h.
I remember doing that lab as an undergrad, or at least attempting such. Despite the grad student's best efforts over multiple weeks in working with us and during his free time, we did little other then discover a room full of half-functioning instrumentation. I think the repeated near-misses in getting results is what helped me not only want to do this for a career, but also lead to some great friendships and camaraderie. Yea, I'm glutton for punishment.
Many the labs at my school were derived from the leftover equipment in labs from a string of long departed Physicists. For some reason, our school thought to allocate $0 for the Physics labs a couple of the years I was there. During our parts searches, we encountered all sorts of ancient yet cool equipment. I got to see things like Michelson's meter, rocket parts from Goddard, and a paper certifying the science building's old DC current wiring work by Edison's labs. I was there during the last of the leaner years of the department, but without such I might have never found out how much Physics can be done with relatively simple measurement devices.
The labs for my Physics classes were about the only classes I ever had qualms of missing during the years I played sports. The challenges faced and the social interactions were more fun then most any afternoon chasing around a ball.
I showed Jordin this entry and said I liked the image of you building little houses out of lead bricks. Then I asked if the wolf could huff and puff and blow them down. He said, "Only if it's a high energy gamma wolf." I laughed immoderately and am still smiling.
MKK