Tue 20 Nov 2007
A day in the metallography lab
Posted by shelbinator under Cracktastic, NaVloPoMo
For NaVloPoMo day 20. This is one of the mundane tasks required before completing a PhD: cutting off lots of little slices of metal that you can then stick into an electron microscope, so you can then scratch your head at the screen and say “Well you can clearly see the micromechanisms of shear transition to what the hell am I looking at?” And then when you make everyone call you Doctor and they think you’re being pretentious and it takes every fiber of your being not to stab them to death with your salad fork, it all makes sense. Music (originally by Brad Sucks) remixed by DeathBoy, CC:By3.0.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)
Tags: navlopomo, navlopomo07, engineering, research
Read more filed under Cracktastic, NaVloPoMo
November 21st, 2007 at 12:31 am
So, exactly why were you cutting up those metal pieces? And yes, you should stab them with your salad fork.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:50 am
So where was the exciting electron microscope footage?
November 21st, 2007 at 10:29 am
oh, science.
November 21st, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I like seeing the equipment you work with.
So far there’s only one Ph.D. I’ve found pretentious. She’s got her doctorate in a completely different field, but now teaches film production and encourages everyone to think her Ph.D. is in film. She’s a faker. Could you stab HER with the salad fork if I point her out?
November 25th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
They needed cuttin’ to fit into the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope. We’re only interested in looking at a very small portion of the surface that failed by fracture, and the microscope can’t handle samples any bigger than about a golf ball.