If it still works, it stays in service. There’s always a bit of “what’s this?” and “what’s it do?” and “how do I make it do what it does?” when stumbling across old equipment, but that’s what we have physicists for.
Vintage Equipment
Tag: labs
Caution: Magnet
Remember those days? Floppy disks and cassette tapes and VHS and all those different storage media using magnetic materials, which could be corrupted or unwritten with inadvertent exposure to strong magnetic fields.
For fun, see how many modern applications still use a stylized version of the 3.5″ floppy as a “save” icon. (As of scribbling this, Microsoft Excel does.)
Battery Access
When the screw heads to the battery access panel are stripped, just go all the way and open up the entire housing. Why not?
The real question is this: why are those screws stripped? Did it arrive that way, battery installed, or did they take a real beating after popping the first battery in? Why have screws to keep it shut in the first place?
Metersticks
In our Physics & Astronomy labs, we use metersticks with great frequency. Often for measurements, sometimes to approximate distances that make the arithmetic easier, and occasionally as a handy tool for pointing to the projector screen.
They aren’t super-high precision any more than the rulers you remember from elementary school, and for that we have other tools. Sometimes, as you can see above, the years have warped and twisted things a bit. We adjust.
As you might expect, they offer metric distances on one side, inches and feet on the other. The best ones – the oldest set – were long ago painted black to conceal those SAE units. Clearly, someone grew weary of students measuring everything in inches and then complaining that the math wasn’t working out right.
Force Table (again)
We’ve pointed out our old and reliable force tables before – classics of the undergraduate physics experience – which arrived here in several installments. Previously, 1957. This young’un only appeared in April of 1964, intended for the Physics 107-8 lab. Not listed in any recent course catalog, we’re uncertain of exactly what that was.
We could probably go pester some librarians, because surely there’s a record, but those folks are awfully busy on more important matters. Leave the idle wondering to the fellows here in the basement.
At any rate, they paid a healthy sum of $96.75 for this precision-machined beast. In today’s dollars: $985.65.
Do you think we’ve gotten our money’s worth yet?
Polystyrene
For one lab, run once each academic year, we need about a half teaspoon’s worth of tiny polystyrene pellets, the kind that get pressed together to make the cheapest, crappiest, least environmentally friendly coffee cups around. Altogether, in a busy lab year, that’s still maybe a third of a cup. And we can recover some of them, because we filter everything before pouring the liquid down the drain.
And we’ve got enough of them sitting in storage to last a couple of lifetimes at this rate. Or to fill up a bean bag chair.
But do open with caution. Those little pellets want desperately to stick to everything, to get everywhere.
Light Bulbs
Sure, the other side says soft white, but let’s be honest: blanco suave sounds way, way better.
Post Holder
It can be a real pleasure to find old objects lying around, with their dates of acquisition marked on the side. January 29th, ’09!
Which ’09, exactly?
Olin Science Building was constructed in 1954, so it’s doubtful this particular post holder dates back to 1909. Especially as the lettering on both sides matches up.
So we were still purchasing equipment for the old, cast-iron optics rails as recently as 15 years ago? Wow.
Copper-coated
Copper-coated steel BBs, used in several different labs throughout physics and astronomy. Like many of the odds and ends we use for labs and demonstrations, these aren’t used as intended by the manufacturer. In this case, one can only imagine that off-label use is actually safer.
Slinky
Around here, we get great mileage out of springs, especially when studying waves and oscillations. And few helical coils grab attention quite like a neon-bright Slinky.
Honestly, if you had the choice between eye-searingly bright colors and boring old steel? We hope you’d go for bonus entertainment value, too.