Got tickets for all three nights at Southport.
If you see someone who looks like...
That's probably your prime suspect protagonist (brightest t-shirt I can find). Feel free to say hello, if only to then say "I'm from the forum!".
I'm trying to make that blue glow stuff you see on electronics displays in the background (where all the tubes and bits of tin foil are), it's been cooking on a propane flame under nitrogen for almost 24h now (to drive the dopant into the crystals). Electroluminescent phosphor.
Here are some photos of the tools at my disposal. As you may guess, I'm quite a fan of at home science.
Can not deploy here, building in progress. What's in the picture? Erm... pressure equalizing funnel, balance, printer, isolating platform, pipette filler, various round bottom flasks, vigreux column, petri dish, vacuum filtration funnels, coil condenser, an experiment that's still waiting for me to clean it up, weeks later (hiding in the background). A mess in a word.
Nothing to see here! Quite literally according to the display.
chem-KEWLZ. Ace wash is dirty acetone, recycling begins at home! I just noticed a container of washing powder has made it's way onto there.
I've got glass AND gas. I do quite a few experiments with gases that will dissolve your lungs or make your balls go supernova with cancer on inhaling them. Or, vice versa, they don't want me (or the atmosphere) breathing anywhere near them. As a result, I also have quite a few items (those tall bottles with squiggly lines coming off them) specifically for handling strange gases.
Reactions. Can be carried out in the reactor. There are some more pressure equalizing funnels (gas theme again), a much bigger equalizing funnel and a dewar for liquefying gases on the far left. And an empty butter dish (essential with kitties around, I'll come down in the morning to find little tongue imprints on the butter if the lid isn't on - EVIDENCE Ms Kitty! EVIDENCE! Paw prints all over the place).
Bigger ain't always better! Certainly true for chemistry. I have a fair bit of this microscale glass. And a fair bit of it, as usual, is missing from the box. That's why I built the damn thing in the first place!
Science doesn't need to be expensive! The beige box there costs around £12,000, to have SERVICED; seriously. But my big ambition in life now is to make science accessible. I go on, and on about things like the balance. I'm using all this gear as a reference, to compare more at home items against. I have some of those drug dealer style £5 scales from China. Compared them to the 0.1mg calibrated, 45kg £3k balance. Less than 1% off!
Similarly, those fridge pumps will do things a £2k laboratory pump will, free from the tip, virtually silent, recycled and very small. The POVO's in South Africa, South America and all around the world, some of those guys really want to learn, but can't afford £3, let alone thirty thousand of them. They need people with this equipment to check things they can get (like used fridge pumps) and say "Yes, you can use that for vacuum distillation!". The fridge pumps actually work BETTER than the £2k laboratory pumps for that kind of thing. The rain forest is loaded with things that are still churning out near miracle results against cancer, yet the people there have next to no money to look at them. There is a needless disparity at work that must be suppressed, for GREAT SCIENCE JUSTICE AND HEALTH!
I am willing to help. With any scientific problem but will not buy and repost from suppliers or do anything for you if it's directly related to high explosives. Things that change the colours of sparklers aren't so bad. Terrorists have monochromatic vision and can only see red, so they're not interested in that.
Edited by johnheritage, 01 October 2010 - 07:25 AM.
