That's really evil....
Sep. 19th, 2008 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
revchrisThe Director of the instrumentation center downstairs is teaching a class this semester that is basically a quick "these are the machines we have and how to use them" course to give people a better idea of what is available and how they could help out people's research.
In two weeks he's doing a lecture on optical microscopy, and using my teaching lab for it.
As part of the lecture, I'm going to make a sample for him ahead of time. He's going to present a picture of the result, and tell people that it is an "artificially colored sample done with the equipment in the room." Then he's going to have them figure out how it was done.
How it's going to be done: I'm going to make an empty mount and grind and polish it flat and smooth. Then I'm going to drill a hole about halfway through it. Next, I'm going to pack the cavity with very tiny pieces of colored modeling clay, and use a razor blade to cleave the resulting mass to flat. Finally, if it works, we're going to take pictures of it.
As a materials science gag, it'll go over well.
As something to do to make your class think, they're definitely not going to like it, since it's going to come right after where he talks about cross polarized light, which can be used to induce false coloration in optically active surfaces and is frequently used to determine orientation angles.
In two weeks he's doing a lecture on optical microscopy, and using my teaching lab for it.
As part of the lecture, I'm going to make a sample for him ahead of time. He's going to present a picture of the result, and tell people that it is an "artificially colored sample done with the equipment in the room." Then he's going to have them figure out how it was done.
How it's going to be done: I'm going to make an empty mount and grind and polish it flat and smooth. Then I'm going to drill a hole about halfway through it. Next, I'm going to pack the cavity with very tiny pieces of colored modeling clay, and use a razor blade to cleave the resulting mass to flat. Finally, if it works, we're going to take pictures of it.
As a materials science gag, it'll go over well.
As something to do to make your class think, they're definitely not going to like it, since it's going to come right after where he talks about cross polarized light, which can be used to induce false coloration in optically active surfaces and is frequently used to determine orientation angles.
