Oh, wait. Wrong coasters.

Cocktail Party Physics: a new wrinkle

The Rocket Scientist is the only faculty member I’ve ever known who keeps coasters in his office (and requires their use). I’ll let you figure out what a coaster fetish tells you about RS – I have my own theories, but (ignoring for the moment the fact that we work for a public university and all our furniture is laminate) there actually are really good reasons for one to use coasters.

Trivia: polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA, mentioned in the post) is an electron-beam resist. That is, if you zap it with electrons (or hard UV) you break some bonds, and the exposed material can be removed chemically. Makes it a useful mask material for various lithography applications.