The 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.

I apologize in advance, but I just had to share....


A blonde's car gets a flat tire on the Interstate one day so she eases it over onto the shoulder of the road.

She carefully steps out of the car and opens the trunk. Takes out two cardboard men, unfolds them and stands them at the rear of the vehicle facing oncoming traffic. The lifelike cardboard men are in trench coats exposing their nude bodies to approaching drivers...

Not surprisingly, the traffic became snarled and backed up. It wasn't very long before a police car arrives. The Officer, clearly enraged, approaches the driver of the disabled vehicle yelling, "What is going on here?"

"My car broke down, Officer" says the woman, calmly.

"Well, what the hell are these obscene cardboard pictures doing here by the road?!" asks the Officer.

"Helllllooooo, those are my emergency flashers."

I was working in the microscopy lab today doing software updates (LabView 8.2.1 via the online installer is really slloooowwwww), and had been in there for about threee hours when the class I was trying to get everything ready for came in.

They were doing data analysis on last week's lab, and today's project was to calculate the Weibull Modulus from their data. Paul (the prof) explained how it was done, and then gave them the necessary equations, and sent most of them off to the other computer lab (because I was still using 9 of the 11 computers in the room).

As they were about to leave, I asked Paul if he'd explained why the Weibull Modulus was only used on data with minor oscillations and a general positive trend. Paul looked back at me with sort of a "deer in the headlights" look.

At which point I said "Well, we all know that Weibulls wobble, but they don't fall down." Paul left the room, and the rest of the undergrads decided that that was a good enough line that they should write it down and use it again later.

A soldier was given the job of hunting for buffalo. To help him, he hired an Indian Scout. The two of them set off on their journey to find buffalo.

After riding awhile, the Indian gets off his horse, puts his ear to the ground and says 'Hmm, buffalo come.'

The soldier scans the area with his binoculars, but sees nothing. He is confused and says to the Indian, 'I do not see anything, how do you know buffalo come?'

The Indian replies, 'ear sticky'.