IR Excitement

A couple things finally went right this week. I learned how to make an optical bond with some "goo" that's not quite the usual cement. The stuff held up ok when we cooled it down to 200 degrees below zero. Jesse, I did stick my hand in it. Scary at first.... And, the little motor thing worked. I had to rig a way to give it an extra volt or two. A 9V battery just didn't cut it at those extreme temps. So, this is good for two reasons. 1 - I don't have to find 10K to buy a professional motor since the one I hacked worked and 2 - since the calcite did ok, I can order the "guts" of the new instrument and get to work on building. Cool!! The downer is, I'm still waiting for $&#! Gerry to fix the broken camera. This work sort-of counts for my thesis, but I'd much rather just do the project I proposed to do...... Anyways, here's the savart plate I made - double image???
Here's the motor and the power supply rig
Dunk!! Crazy to think that the liquid is so ridiculously cold. If you move the air in the bucket it instantly turns to fog. There's some cool sloshing and pouring things you can do, as well as watching everything freeze (and break like the terminator II).
my boss, jeff, doing his thing. i think he spends 4 to 6 hours a day like this. then the other 12 hours of his work day is spent hunched over that computer. workaholic?