Yakity Yak

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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

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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

Aye Arr!

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Picked up another light source. My previous broadband purchase was a UV light , and since I was deficient on the other side of the visible spectrum, I grabbed an IR source LED flashlight. I snuck into the lab to measure the spectrum, because we have an analyzer that covers 600-1700 nm. Just popped the flashlight onto the input jack (for fiber) and that coupled enough light in to make a measurement.

Here’s what it looked like:
ando

The early scans were smooth, so I’m not sure if the couple of dips in there are a result of some setting I changed, or if it’s a real effect (perhaps of heating up — the flashlight gets warm after a while, and this is a scan of the output after it was on for a few minutes)

This isn’t the first (nor, I expect, the last) test of something mundane, just because the equipment is available. A few years back there was a rumor that the US $20 bill had an RFID chip in it, located in Andrew Jackson’s eye, as “evidenced” by bills burning at that position when microwaved. A colleague and I tested that with a network analyzer, since an RFID chip should have a strong absorption feature on resonance. Nada. Not surprisingly, it’s an urban legend. (I swear it’s not there. Trust me: I work for the government)

Littering … and Creating a Nuisance

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On July 11, 1979, the space station Skylab re-entered the atmosphere, broke up and rained down over Western Australia and the Indian Ocean. (Ah, yes, I remember going to a Skylab-is-falling party) The Shire of Esperance fined NASA $400 for littering.

Littering fine paid

ALMOST 30 years after fining NASA for littering the local area with debris from abandoned space station Skylab, the Shire of Esperance has received a $US400 cheque. American radio station Highway Radio paid the fine on NASA’s behalf, raising the funds on variety breakfast program Barker and Barley in the Morning.