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The Pillars of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
 The undergraduates will...do something completely stupid. Nick Loomis recalls coming to the lab early one morning only to find stacks of mail sorters just lying in the hall. Not many people realize that mail sorters like the ones lying in our hall are ideally shaped to be turned into pillars. So Nick did the sensible thing and turned them into pillars. But more honorably, he dedicated each pillar to a member of the sub-basement and graced them with a kim wipe fire housed inside an aluminum foil pot. Please enjoy...  The many graduates from this group all have at least one thing in common. We all know graduate students get paid by a monthly stipend. Due to the dedication of these students we find they work long and hard on their projects. This sets their wage per hour to about $1.50 at times. Spending hours in the lab leaves little time for much else. Thus, we sacrifice for the things we love. A few of our students, when not working, spend time with their wives. Others who do not have wives may read. What is the common attribute you ask? If the students had not learned to forgo eating, either because they cannot afford to or do not have the time, then our group would not be half as productive as it is. Therefore we light this fire to you graduate students who draws moisture from my eyes.  We work with lasers quite often. Some lasers are bigger than others but that, I'm told, has no relevance. Each can incinerate your eyes equally well. We have always had problems with keeping people out of the laser laboratory when things are running. We have enough goggles and our beam pollution is minimal but we'd still like to keep people out. One day, perhaps, we will lock the door. Until then, this is for you who do the things we don't like.  Towards the end of the school year...or the beginning of the summer we have a configuration change with people joining the group and others leaving for the summer. Unfortunately, some people leave before introductions can be made. Thus, we have people who don't know our newest graduate student Jack.  Research has shown the sciences are like magnets for people who have attention deficit disorder and like science. A member of our group was interested in finding out whether he had attention deficit disorder. It was an obsession with him. Many hours were spent over the course of three months looking for information. Our man even made several appointments with someone who could diagnose ADD. However, our hero found out this person was a social worker with no knowledge of adult ADD and then his ADD kicked in. Alas, he lost interest in confirming if he had it or not. This is for you my man.  Remember when you were four years old and everything you made was constructed of Elmer's glue and duct tape? Part of becoming a post-doc is realizing that, at yet another pivitol point in your life, duct tape can solve all your problems again. We have several oustanding -and working- examples from various folks throughout the ages.  No, Justin, we're not talking about getting high and listening to ELO. Do I have to explain every bad joke? If nothing else, Doc Tim has a great love for ELO that will never be surpassed by any group in the history of humanity. So why doesn't he have their albums? Justin, I'm not explaining that, either.  Our microwave sits waiting patiently in the hallway to heat our lunch time meals and whatever else we feel like putting inside it. Not to say that we've ever put anything else into our loving microwave... but we haven't.  Nick's note: "When I showed up at the lab a little after 1 AM and found Jon there baking his system, I knew that we had to do something interesting to keep both of us awake. Inevitably, there would be someone who thought our display would be too stupid not to make fun of it. At 2AM as we were assembling the display, I didn't give a darn about those opinions--and thus this flame was for me."   |
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Archived: January 2020 |