rhinosaur
Just a statistic
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2007
- Messages
- 1,464
- MBTI Type
- INTP
I'm oddly curious about this. What is where you work like?
So I'm in grad school, and have several different roles. Lately I've been doing more of the materials science thing, so I've been spending time in a very messy lab. There is stuff everywhere. Large heavy metal vacuum chambers and big blue furnaces are stationed in several places around the room, and there are all sorts of wires and tubes coming out of them. Each is labeled with a printed out image: one of a cowboy, one of a question mark, another with a crown. All of the trash cans are filled to capacity, and there is always a lot of glassware in the sink. If you want space in a fume hood, you've got to move someone else's stuff. Various fancy digital things are scattered around the rooms; some handheld, some too big to move except by taking them apart. The age of any of this equipment spans at least three decades. The price spans six digits.
Occasionally the mess will be punctuated with worn-out hazard signs. There are several items claiming "clean room only," despite the fact that there is no longer a clean room. Some radiation warning signs are on the wrong doors, probably because the X-ray machines were moved.
The juxtaposition of high-tech science with this chaotic environment is curious, but in my experience is a much more common scenario than a perfect lab with perfect equipment and no safety violations.
So I'm in grad school, and have several different roles. Lately I've been doing more of the materials science thing, so I've been spending time in a very messy lab. There is stuff everywhere. Large heavy metal vacuum chambers and big blue furnaces are stationed in several places around the room, and there are all sorts of wires and tubes coming out of them. Each is labeled with a printed out image: one of a cowboy, one of a question mark, another with a crown. All of the trash cans are filled to capacity, and there is always a lot of glassware in the sink. If you want space in a fume hood, you've got to move someone else's stuff. Various fancy digital things are scattered around the rooms; some handheld, some too big to move except by taking them apart. The age of any of this equipment spans at least three decades. The price spans six digits.
Occasionally the mess will be punctuated with worn-out hazard signs. There are several items claiming "clean room only," despite the fact that there is no longer a clean room. Some radiation warning signs are on the wrong doors, probably because the X-ray machines were moved.
The juxtaposition of high-tech science with this chaotic environment is curious, but in my experience is a much more common scenario than a perfect lab with perfect equipment and no safety violations.