Daily Archives: May 13, 2009

Yakity Yak

Posted on by

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.

Synchronicity

Posted on by

I was browsing the web and ran across this Gigapixel image of downtown Vancouver. I used to live there — not downtown, since my postdoc salary wouldn’t support that — but I opened it to see if I recognized the area. And I did, but not from when I lived there. I went to a conference there a few years ago, and went geocaching in the mornings as my internal clock ensured that I was always awake by 5 AM. Went out and about and got back by 7, in time to get ready for the morning sessions. There’s a geocache hidden in that gazebo-like structure. The picture was taken from a bridge, and from the photographer’s perspective, the hockey/basketball venue is to the right and a little behind.

Here it is on Google maps