I ended the previous laser post by noting that diode lasers need some additional wavelength selection to be done in order to be useful as light sources for spectroscopy experiments. In their natural state, they tend to emit light over a broader range of wavelengths than is really ideal, and we’d like to narrow that […]
Category: My Lab
Woo-Hoo!
The approval for the second year of my NSF grant just came through. This wasn’t really in doubt, but it’s nice to have confirmation that the thirty-odd thousand dollars I was counting on to run the next year of the experiment will actually, you know, be available when I start sending purchase orders out for […]
A Day in the Life
Woke up, got out of bed Ran a comb across my head…
Why Are You Asking Me?
I’ve found myself in the weird position of giving career advice twice in the last week and a half. Once was to a former student, which I sort of understand, while the second time was a grad student in my former research group, who I’ve never met. I still don’t really feel qualified to offer […]
Every Day I Write (in) the (Lab) Book
One of the features I always like in the print edition of Seed is the lab notebook pictorial. Every month (or, at least, all three of the months that I’ve looked at the print edition), they publish a reproduction of a page or two from the lab notebook of a working scientist. It’s sort of […]
One, Two, Many, Lots…
Union College Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Feb. 16, 2006 Speaker: Dr. Chad Orzel, Union College Title: “Counting Atoms for Astrophysics: Atom Traps, Neutrino Detectors, and Radioactive Background Measurements” Abstract: A new generation of neutrino and dark matter detectors is currently under development, using liquid neon or xenon as a detection medium. These detectors offer unprecedented […]