Tag: physics

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.

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.

VHS

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Video Home System

Look, sometimes the very specific version you want only exists in a format that’s hard to make use of, like a VHS cassette. That’s why we have helpful, talented people with specific sorts of tech savvy to help us out with bringing oldies but goodies into a more modern format that’s still destined to veer into obsolescence after a while. Thanks, Wes!

For those wondering, AAPT stands for the American Association of Physics Teachers.

In this case, anyway. But for a thought experiment, imagine the collapse of Galloping Gertie as narrated by these other AAPT organizations and/or acronym users:

  • Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists
  • American Association of Psychiatric Technicians
  • American Association of Philosophy Teachers
  • American Academy of Physical Therapy
  • American Academy of Personal Training
  • American Association of Pharmacy Technicians
  • Android Asset Packaging Tool (AAPT2 build tool)
  • International Institute for Animal Assisted Play Therapy
  • AAPT Limited (Australian telecommunications company)
  • ACTTION-APS Pain Taxonomy from the American Pain Society
  • Association of Anatomical Pathology Technology
  • All American Pet Company, Inc. (stock ticker symbol)
  • Alabama Association for Play Therapy
  • Advanced Algebra & Functions Placement Test

Some of those could be really entertaining. Just don’t mention poor Tubby the cocker spaniel to the animal assisted play folks.

Metersticks

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Three metersticks
Various vintages.

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.

Trail Snacks

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Highbush blueberries on trailside
Not pictured: lowbush blueberries, which are already all eaten.

Physics doesn’t rely on field work as much as some other disciplines – biology, geology – but sometimes it’s necessary and the fresh air does us good. So do the occasional wild treats found along the trail.

Just be sure to share them with the local bears and birds!

Old stone dam at Penn Roosevelt State Park.
Good ol’ Penn Roosevelt dam!

Boxes Upon Boxes

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
The Original.

In great big boxes full of boxes, the toys begin to arrive. We stash them in corners, in front of other shelves, any place mostly out of the way before separating, sorting, packing, and distributing.

Three hundred yo-yos, Imperials and Butterflies, in an assortment of colors. Every box is full of surprises!

Slide Projector

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Slide projector, no carousel
The classic.

Remember slide film? Carousels and projectors and hauling out the big screen to see those vacation photos? Are you old enough to remember high school and/or college lectures on slides? The shop techs remember.

Nowadays everyone’s much more likely to use Slides than slides, of course. More portable, for the most part. Easier to edit, up until the last moment. Overall, a lot of advantages. But the old-school ones were pretty cool, too.

One can only hope that back in the days of the Audio-Visual Aids Department (we’re assuming they’ve been subsumed into L&IT, but not ruling out the possibility of a now-defunct academic department), they wheeled these – and film projectors, and VCRs, and hopefully LaserDiscs, too – into your classroom space on the classic steel cart. Embedded YouTube clips just aren’t the same.