Presented without comment, with the acknowledgment that presenting this at all is a sort of comment.
Connector cables
Tag: storage
Old Electronics
In the process of clearing space, you come across all manner of ancient and fascinating things. Desktop computers. Inkjet printers. CRT televisions. Slide projectors. Old motors and control gear to approximate sidereal motion.
Well, okay, reverse sidereal motion. The reason telescope mounts cost more than telescopes, because keeping stars and deep sky objects fixed in the field of view is no small task.
We’ll pop some of these open, gut ’em for any good parts, and move the remainder on to e-recycling. It’s the cycle of e-life!
Beats
In acoustics, there’s a phenomenon known as beats, which is when two similar tones generate an interference pattern that sounds like a pulsing beat. It happens with waves of all kinds, waves being moving energy and all that, but sometimes it’s easier to really get the sensation when you hear it. Graphing out the sinusoids and showing the constructive and destructive interference helps explain it. Hearing that wubwubwubwubwub cements it.
We have what looks, at first glance, like a glockenspiel, with its metal bars all in a row. Tap one with the mallet, and it sounds almost the same as the one next to it. Almost. Tap two at once, and you get the beats.
At one end, it’s 440 Hz. Then 439, 438, 437, 436, and 435 Hz. Not only can you hear the beats, but you can very clearly hear the change in beat frequency as you combine tones in different combinations. It’s very cool.
Also quite unnerving after a while. woobwoobwoobwoobwoob
Compass
We have many, many compasses scattered about the department. The vast majority come and go as part of the toy kits for PHYS 212, tiny ones useful for illustrating the effects of magnetic fields. Probably more that than for wilderness orienteering. Note: a physics toy kit, despite its educational and entertainment value, is probably insufficient on its own for wilderness survival. Check with the fine folks at Outdoor Education & Leadership for that.
One of the entertaining compass demos is to array a circle of them around an unshielded wire, and seeing the effect of turning the current on and off. Half a dozen little red arrows snapping to attention never loses its neat-o quality.
There’s also this little gem, tucked away in one of our closets. Inscribed with a nice little dedication, reading “TO BUCKNEL / A FRIEND” on the side. Which, the longer you look at it, seems a little less clear each time.
Maybe you had to be there? Interpret it as you will.
“The Perfect Cleaner”
Sometimes, stuff just lingers. It’s unclear how long it’s been sitting on this or any shelf, whether it has any use anymore, how on earth to dispose of it, etc. Of course, those odd objects tend to sport some of the coolest old labels.
So much to enjoy here! Buddy the dog, holding a flag with his name, but also helpfully labeled below as “Buddy,” just in case it wasn’t obvious enough. Directions for using metal polish on non-metallic surfaces, which – to be fair – might not be obvious. (Still mostly amounts to wipe on with a soft cloth, wipe off with a soft cloth.) The prime visual real estate for “Non-Inflammable,” which is an entertaining reminder of the flammable/inflammable quirk of the English language. What a country!
It’s not entirely clear if the yellow color was an original choice or has been caused by many years of aging paper.
At any rate, the steel cap is thoroughly corroded shut, so there’s no telling what remains inside. Whether that corrosion is caused by or despite the contents of the Capital Metal Polish container, we’ll never know.
“The Pit”
When you have a regular need to open lots of doors – accessing equipment, supplying labs and classrooms, helping coworkers find their misplaced keys – the powers that be may be kind enough to cut you a master key. Saves time, effort, and several pounds of metal on a keyring. They are, of course, master keys with a limited range. Certain doors are off-limits.
The access door to the elevator-base maintenance? That’s a place we don’t need to be. It’s only important that we don’t stack anything of substance on top. (The roll of plastic seen here could be blown away by a light breeze.) Not that it wouldn’t be neat to have a look inside – after all, who wouldn’t like to check out some new kind of specialized machinery? – but if the elevator’s working, maybe let it be.
That said, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the accompanying light switch:
Sure. Of course. How else would you label it? Dark, forbidden basements should always get the proper horror movie styling.
And then there’s the nubbin of a switch. Makes one wonder. Can’t possibly be from overuse. (Can it?) Implies that someone did that on purpose.
Maybe the answer’s down in the pit.
Acquisition Dates
It seems the university has drifted away from this, but if you look around at old equipment, a great deal of it is marked with the date it was acquired and – if it’s old enough – the cost. They’re fascinating glimpses into the past.
Here, an optics bench made by the Central Scientific Co. of Chicago, Illinois. Or, as they’d prefer, Cenco of Chicago, U.S.A. This particular 132cm chunk of cast iron and steel joined the department in late September of 1943, for the low, low price of $40. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator, that’s an excessively specific $681.17 in today’s dollars. (Significant digits!)
Up until now, it’s been in more or less continuous lab use, only recently replaced by brand-new extruded aluminum optics benches. Almost 80 years, and they’re not entirely kaput just yet.
After all, if an apparatus continues to be useful, we’ll keep it around. This one is getting repurposed for future labs, so we’ll see how many more decades it has in it…
Radio knobs
There’s a tendency in the shop to scrounge and save almost everything. You never know when something might come in handy, and experience has shown, over and over, that there’s value in all but the junkiest junk. And even that, if sufficiently large/heavy/whatever, can be an effective doorstop, or spray paint shield, or otherwise helpful bit of plain old physical mass. When a piece of equipment breaks and is just irreparable, you dig out the good bits and set ’em aside.
It’s important to keep track of which boxes contain the useful bits and which the junk. Sometimes the difference isn’t immediately obvious.
There’s a drawer in one of our storage rooms labeled “Radio Knobs.” Indeed, that’s what’s inside. Collected by our predecessors from an array of broken equipment, calmly waiting their turn to be useful once more.
And, yes, they have been useful.
Fulgurites
We have multiple storage rooms, each with shelves, cabinets, drawers, and seemingly endless places to tuck away small objects. It’s easy, so easy, to simply forget something. Then, years later, someone else gets the joy of stumbling across it.
Sometimes it’s a century or more.
Petrified Jersey Lightning
or
Fulgurites from South Jersey collected by John G. [unknown]
Presented to Physics Dept 1/14/10
That would be January 14th, 1910.
Fulgurites are a mineraloid formed when lightning strikes the earth and fuses mineral grains. They come in as many varieties as there are different types of soil, and as we’re in Physics, not Geology, our understanding of the particulars is as reliant on Wikipedia as yours.
We can only guess as to why John gifted Physics with these 112 years ago, but we appreciate it. Everyone should have the chance to stumble across a little petrified Jersey lightning from time to time.
Drinking Bird
Greetings from one of the unofficial mascots of Physics, the drinking bird! Forever wearing its top hat, this classic toy is found all around the department. Though we keep a drawer full of them in storage, there are a handful about the shop shelves, professors’ offices, and occasionally elsewhere. The drinking bird is an example of a heat engine, which converts heat into mechanical energy.
Drinking birds are especially fun because they operate at room temperature. Two glass bulbs are connected by a tube and filled with methylene chloride, which has a low boiling point and condenses and vaporizes readily within the vessel. When the upright bird’s felt-covered head is wet, evaporative cooling causes a vapor pressure differential between the two ends. As liquid from the bottom rises, the bird becomes top-heavy and leans down for a drink, re-wetting the felt and priming the process to repeat. It’s an entertaining demonstration of the effects of various laws of physics.
There’s the ideal gas law, of course. Temperature change causes pressure change, which causes a shift in the balance of liquid and vapor. That shift in mass results in a center of mass that oscillates from one side to the other of the fulcrum, creating torque and movement. For as long as the bird can re-wet itself and maintain the temperature differential, the heat engine will continue to operate.
Alternately, you can apply a heat source to the lower bulb to get the same effect, which is the basis for most heat engines. There are many options to produce heat, and a wealth of engine designs to turn that thermal energy into useful work. But few are as simple, visually apparent, and entertaining as a bobbing glass toy.