- Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes.
- Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes.
- Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot 137Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes.
- Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the computer: 20 minutes.
- Time between saying “What happens if you just click ‘Cancel?'” and getting the computer working: 2 seconds.
- Time spent connecting the detector, amplifiers, and high-voltage power supply: 5 minutes.
- Time spent swapping connections around to find the right configuration: 10 minutes.
- Time spent trying to figure out why the Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA) on the computer wasn’t recording a useful spectrum: 30 minutes.
- Time between asking “What does this switch do?” and seeing a useful spectrum: 1.5 seconds.
- Time spent doing a quick preliminary measurement of the Compton effect: 10 minutes.
- Time spent re-doing all the connections to move the detector closer to the electronics, because the cables don’t reach: 10 minutes.
- Time spent jiggling the cables to the PMT in order to get rid of spurious noise peaks: 20 minutes (integrated over full lab period).
- Time spent looking for a working Geiger counter: 30 minutes.
- Time spent looking for a mouse for the data analysis computer: 5 minutes.
- Time spent looking for a different mouse for the data analysis computer, one that wasn’t a useless piece of shit: 10 minutes.
- Time spent explaining the MCA calibration procedure to students: 15 minutes.
- Time spent re-explaining the MCA calibration procedure to students: 30 minutes.
- Time spent trying to get the MCA program display back to normal after students poked randomly at the keyboard for a while: 15 minutes.
- Time spent hyperventilating after students picked up the very expensive PMT, and waved it around like it was indestructible: 5 minutes.
- Time spent listening to student imitations of me saying, “Oh, God! Put that down!”: 1,653 hours (projected).
- Time spent decompressing after the end of lab: 45 minutes.
- Time until I have to do all this again: Not nearly long enough.