Tag: curiosity

Can of Screws

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Coffee can full of tiny screws.
In case you were wondering: it’s heavy.

It’s an old coffee can full of tiny screws. The ones on top appear to be #3-56 (fine thread) in stainless steel, though the variety beneath is diverse. All in all, weighing in at approximately 3,063g. Individual screws weigh in – from a coarse sample – between 0.11g and 0.67g each.

Not going to throw them out, but just as unlikely to know when they might ever be put to use. Or how, precisely, we’d expect to find the necessary screws buried in such a mass.

Just, please, don’t drop it on the floor.

Clock

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
A hideous old table clock.
No idea. Really, none.

Sometimes you find oddities whose initial and continued existence boggles the mind. This clock was gathering dust atop the bookcases in the student lounge, battery-free and long-forgotten.

Where did it come from? What life did it live before it came to Olin? Who thought enough of it to acquire, but not enough to take with them?

What should we do with it now?

Cicadas

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Cicada and molted shell on a leaf.
Very chill bug.

While exploring a potential site for measurement equipment, it’s important to keep an eye on the local wildlife. After a long time underground, those big red eyes are just taking it all in.

Not pictured: all of the other cicadas all over the place. Because where there’s one, there are bound to be many, many more. Brood XIV, maybe?

Alligator Clip

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
An alligator clip taped to a steel rod.
Fierce fellow!

Sometimes you stumble across a delightful artifact. One with an unknown, perhaps unknowable history. Clearly, at one point, it was necessary to hold an object in a particular place, and none of the available clips, clamps, or clasps were up to the task.

A steel rod, an alligator clip, and some electrical tape to the rescue!

What’s fascinating about this isn’t the specifics of the object, but the way that these temporary, stopgap solutions can linger. After enough time and use, they become ordinary and unremarkable. Familiar.

Until, some indefinite period of years later, a fresh set of eyes spots them in an old drawer. Look at what’s in here!

Optical Discs

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Stack of DVD-R discs.
Never used, never to be used.

It really wasn’t that long ago that computers came equipped with optical disc drives, and they were effective means of data storage, and the density you could store on a DVD instead of a CD was pretty exciting. Now? They’re not only borderline-useless, but the features that we used to reference as a cultural touchstone are no longer obvious to our students.

It’s not that they don’t know what these are. It’s that they haven’t handled a million of them to know their dimensions, to understand the diffraction rainbow they make. The physicists around here remember using the inescapable AOL discs as cheap, readily available diffraction gratings back in grad school. The astronomers use their proportions to illustrate the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy. Students now need to physically hold one of these to get the idea, because they don’t have a mental image ready to go.

Our Galaxy, if you were wondering, is roughly proportioned as a CD, only instead of being a millimeter and a half thick, is more like 1,000 light years. Very roughly, anyway.

Carbonized

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Bamboo cutting board with large spiral section burnt to charcoal
Oops!

Strange things come through the shop doors some days. This one perfumed the shop for a time, a bamboo cutting board which had been resting on a hot electric coil. Everything smelled like burnt corn husk.

Everything. It was a pervasive scent, intriguing at first and overwhelming after a time.

Bamboo cutting board with a smooth, round divot where the burnt area had been
Looks and smells better.

Scraped, chiseled, sanded, and… well, not exactly like brand new, but in usable shape once again!

Part 1

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Ditto of Math 101 final exam, part 1, from November 15, 1948
Ditto!

Astronomy, here and elsewhere often under the Physics umbrella, was once part of the Mathematics department at Bucknell. Occasionally, we’ll stumble across some old files in the Observatory that have been yellowing gracefully for decades. Like this two-part final exam from Math 101. Algebra!

Of note for context: this old exam – November 15th, 1948 – waited patiently in a filing cabinet at the current Observatory, built in 1963. In all likelihood, it sat in a folder in the old Observatory for thirteen years, transferred to Tustin Gym for a time, and then quietly continued to be forgotten in a new building until some tech decided to clean the place up a bit.

Who doesn’t love finding curiosities in purple ditto ink?

Stamped

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Lead brick, painted yellow, stamped by Nuclear Associates of Carle Place, NY.
It’s big, heavy, and boldly colored.

Lead bricks are useful things. This one – still bearing the stamp of Nuclear Associates, of Carle Place, NY – has had its fair share of scuffs and dents. (Lead’s soft stuff, you know.) These days it functions as a handy doorstop and a hands-on tool for explaining the density of matter.

Denser than water, than aluminum, than a nickel-iron meteorite. (All easy samples to acquire for demonstration.) Less dense than osmium; about half as much. (Not on hand, unfortunately.) Definitely less dense than the core of our Sun, by an order of magnitude-plus.

Also no handy samples of stellar core plasma on hand.