Category: Uncategorized

Do Not Touch

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Orange warning label reads "CAUTION Touching or handling delicate optical components will destroy them"
If they could have added a klaxon, they would have.

There are times when you want your warnings to be relatively subtle. Visible, readily noted by anyone paying attention. And then there are the ones demanding you take notice.

Do you know what’s in here? (Not specifically.) Do you think you should open and check. (Not particularly.) Are you curious? (Yes, very much so.)

When there’s an obnoxiously bright orange label warning that fingers will destroy the contents, it’s easy to recall that there are loads of other toys around here which are a wee bit less delicate.

Yo-yos also come in bright orange.

Bespoke Breadboard

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Long piece of aluminum, in process of machining mounting holes.
So many.

Need a thing, but can’t get it in the right size, right shape, right odd set of dimensions? That’s one reason to keep a workshop in the basement. If we can possibly make it, we’ll certainly try.

Pictured: a custom optics breadboard, for a very specific apparatus, with many, many drilled, tapped, and cleaned 1/4″-20 mounting holes. It’s big, and shiny, and has a bright future ahead!

Probably with lasers or something. Lots of lasers around here.

Crookes Radiometer

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Spinning Crookes radiometer on a sunny windowsill.
Sometimes a little lens flare is fun.

Here in the basement, we have all sorts of curiosities. (Hence this strange blog.) Among them, a Crookes radiometer happily spinning in the sunshine. It’s a delight on these crisp, clear, wintry mornings.

The short version: inside a partial vacuum, little black-and-white vanes sit atop a low-friction pivot. When heated, typically by sunlight (but a flashlight will do), it begins to spin, as if propelled by an invisible thrust from the black sides of the vanes. We’ve been told it’s a process of thermal transpiration that makes this happen, but no matter what, it’s oddly hypnotic.

Perforations

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Perforation in library book page reads "Bucknell University Library"
Better or worse than a rubber stamp?

Old texts from the library sometimes still have these perforated markings, ensuring that no one forgets that this particular copy of Morse’s Vibration and Sound, from the International Series in Pure and Applied Physics, isn’t the same one that Grandma’s reading for her book club. They’re kind of charming in their own way, a means of labeling texts that disappeared at some point.

Presumably the librarians could enlighten us on that point, were we to ask nicely.

In the meantime, we’ll just muse over the idea that for a time, some individual had to take every new acquisition and punch a few of these before the first shelving. Some dedicated machine sat on a desk just for this purpose. And when it was a big day, those little punched-out chads probably got everywhere. The spilled glitter of their day.