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Why does my lab feel like the Soviet Navy?
Jun. 1st, 2004 01:20 pmI watched K-19 over the weekend and this morning found some disturbing resemblances to my lab group.
We needed to do a connectivity check with a digital multimeter. On the first two meters we tried, the batteries were dead, or so we thought. Replacing batteries only revealed that something was wrong with the LCD making readings very difficult to read.
Then we needed to clean some stuff for the vacuum chamber with methanol, only to find that most of the squirt bottles of it were empty.
And finally, this morning I looked at how to repair a broken Langmuir probe, which I knew I'd have to do when I arrived. Problem: only a schematic diagram in someone's dissertation and no detailed design drawings.
At least there's no way I'll be getting a lethal dose of radiation doing this sort of stuff. And I'm told that all the things that were out (multimeters, methanol) are seldom used in my lab, which would partly explain it.
We needed to do a connectivity check with a digital multimeter. On the first two meters we tried, the batteries were dead, or so we thought. Replacing batteries only revealed that something was wrong with the LCD making readings very difficult to read.
Then we needed to clean some stuff for the vacuum chamber with methanol, only to find that most of the squirt bottles of it were empty.
And finally, this morning I looked at how to repair a broken Langmuir probe, which I knew I'd have to do when I arrived. Problem: only a schematic diagram in someone's dissertation and no detailed design drawings.
At least there's no way I'll be getting a lethal dose of radiation doing this sort of stuff. And I'm told that all the things that were out (multimeters, methanol) are seldom used in my lab, which would partly explain it.
