Discoveries in the Physics & Astronomy shop | Science, curiosities, and surprises
Once upon a time – for a good long while, in fact – mathematics and astronomy overlapped. Now, of course, astronomy is considered more appropriately physics-adjacent, and mathematics would like to make it clear that while they share a department with statistics, the two really are their own, distinct fields.
Then there’s the fuzzy boundary zone between biophysics and applied mathematics and mechanical engineering…
Welcome to the new semester!
This was a quality instrument, we’re supposing. Currently it’s a steel door, with its associated cabinet, apparatus, and everything else unaccounted for and presumed long gone. Any details associated with it have disappeared as well.
But check out that sticker! The Nuclear-Chicago Corporation made a variety of devices for nuclear radiation detection, although a cursory internet search reveals mostly hand-held items rather than cabinet-mounted equipment. Still, have a look through that fantastic mid-century aesthetic! Back in the days when uranium prospecting was what all the cool kids were doing.
They put out the model 2586 “Cutie Pie” in 1954. The Cutie Pie.
At any rate, Abbott Laboratories bought them out in 1964, so whatever device this accompanied goes back to sometime between 1954 – the name change to Nuclear-Chicago – and the 1964 sale. Should we ever stumble across the remains of it, rest assured we’ll make note of it.
In our attempts to minimize the ever-growing aura of light pollution around the Observatory, we work to form good relationships with our neighbors. And to maintain them.
Back in 1979 – an excellent vintage! – the Keystone Water Company agreed to a switch controlling the light outside their standpipes, just south of the Observatory. For as long as we remain good stewards of the switch, always turning it back on when we’re done observing, they let us adjust the night sky’s brightness just a little bit more each night.
Forty-four years and counting.
Your average TA for an Astronomy night lab is excited about their job. They not only took an Astronomy course, but liked it enough to come back. At night. Irregularly, as the weather permits, sometimes in the cold of a Pennsylvania winter. They’re enthusiastic about their job. We’re enthusiastic about them.
So when you find notes from almost three decades ago with student gripes? Totally understand. We wish every student could bring the same excitement to a night with telescopes and stars.
And, for the record: Saturn absolutely is beautiful through a telescope on a night with no moon. Just phenomenal.
Some years ago, back in 1887, the University received a lovely Clark & Sons refracting telescope, complete with a clock drive to track the stars against the Earth’s rotation. When a shiny new toy scientific apparatus arrives on your doorstep, it’s very important to confirm that it works as intended. Here, in an old notebook, we see the original data on the clock drive’s variance from the ideal sidereal tracking rate.
“Observations for Determining Sidereal Clock’s Rate Nov. 8, 1889”
Then follows a table of stars with known right ascension and declination, then a repeated set of measurements 20 days later. “Rate of Loss per day .268 sec.” Considering the frequency with which proper polar alignment and tracking proves a nuisance more than a century later, that seems pretty good. The clock drive is long gone, of course, so we can only guess at how accurate it was and stayed throughout the decades.
It looks like these entries were by a J. D. Minick, Class of ’88. Best guess is a John David Minick, graduate of Bucknell in 1888, listed as Prof. John D. Minick of Lenoir, N.C. in the Memorials of Bucknell University, 1846 – 1896. Astronomer, apparently. Mathematician? Physicist? At this point, we’re content with the mystery.
Around the same time, Bucknell was also the home of one Jacob Henry Minick, Class of 1891. He’s listed in the link above as from Orrstown, PA, in Franklin County. Any relation?
His name lives on at the university in the form of an endowed scholarship:
“The Jacob H. Minick Fund was established by a bequest from Jacob H. Minick, Class of 1891, the income of which is to be given each year to students who, because of some physical difficulty, are forced to use crutches during all of their college work.”
There’s a story there, no doubt.
As one would imagine, university buildings have tons of books in them. Shelves upon shelves, editions going back well over a century. See above, The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, 1887. Is it useful? Not particularly these days. Does it look cool on the shelf in line with year after year of its subsequent volumes? Of course!
Note the volume near the middle of the image, with the well-worn spine. It’s a duplicate of the book to the right, the 1922 edition, save for one key detail. A bookplate:
Ex Libris Harry Scheidy Everett. Listed in L’Agenda 1925 as Associate Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy and Director of the Observatory, he was already a Bucknell alumnus, having received his Master of Arts on Wednesday, June 18th, 1913, according to the Bucknell Catalogue of 1912-13. (He also played the violoncello.)
Astronomy now lives under the Physics umbrella, rather than Mathematics, although we’re all stacked on top of each other here in Olin Science.
Have a look at that bookplate, and imagine that self-described philomath Dr. Everett was having a grand old time drawing that up. In case you can’t read it, the inscription above the doors reads: “Let none ignorant of Geometry enter here“
Bet he was a unique individual, that Dr. Everett.
Ghost plant, Monotropa uniflora, happily flowering in the Pennsylvania forest. Sometimes we just like to appreciate the little moments of beauty which surround us.
Camping. For science!
The enormous beige box is a “Basecamp Kitchen Kit,” in case you’re wondering. It’s half as heavy as it looks.
Writing an instruction manual is a serious challenge. Sometimes you have to convey certain key information, but doing so is awkward.
“If necessary, turn on the device.”
If necessary
Always assume it’s specified because this was previously a problem.
It’s a regular occurrence that we run across old objects which just aren’t useful anymore, at least not as they were originally intended. Sometimes they’re junk. Sometimes they work well enough, and it’s nice to have a backup around, just in case. And sometimes?
Sometimes it’s old enough that it’s got a little bit of cool going on. Like this 1960 Tektronix 503 oscilloscope. It shouts SPACE AGE! from all angles. (Our good friend Matt likened the round display screen to a porthole into a sea of electrons. Of course!)
It might not work anymore – probably depends on whether the capacitors are still in good shape – but we haven’t tried. It’s not like we’re going to use this in place of any of the other, more modern, higher-frequency, smaller-footprint ‘scopes we’ve got in numerous labs. This stays around because it looks amazing.
Even the insides are fantastic! Big honkin’ resistors, induction coils, capacitors, all widely spaced for effective heat dissipation. You can trace how each knob turns and switches circuit components in each of those cylindrical arrays. As a kid, this is probably the mental image of what it looks like inside a giant robot. Giant robots are the best robots.
On the other side, we can check out all of the vacuum tubes that made this sucker hum. Plus a big ol’ transformer and a wonderfully stylish CRT for the display. Vacuum tubes don’t show up many places anymore, having been replaced with miniaturized circuit components, but we still have use for them in special cases. (Photomultiplier tubes in our wave-particle duality lab, for example.) Despite their rarity, you can’t deny that they look awesome.
We even have a pair of manuals. A pair. Does that mean there were once a set of 503s around? Could we possibly stumble across another, gathering dust beneath a workbench in a dark corner someplace?
After all, that’s where this one popped up, undisturbed for decades. Never know what you’ll uncover.