Just another clean up, right?
Monday, 21. January 2008, 12:19:47
Well, inspired by these guys clean up I had to write my on feelings and experiences on the matter.
This requires a little background description first. I am a 4th year PhD student at Unicamp, applied physics division. My lab is a mess of paperwork, funny equipments and dangerous samples.
We have one big lab full of furnaces (something quite nice during the winter but somewhat complicated during the summer... which comprehends most of the time in Brazil) and a mezanine on top, where we students stay.
This is what my desk looked like around a week before I decided to clean it... At the time I was leaving to the Sincrotron Lab near Unicamp, thus the bag.
Following the lead from the original post, here is what I found:
- name cards (or dog colars, as I like to call them) for a 2002 internal student's conference
- someonelse's quantum mechanics test (???)
- my old list of really stupid things students write on their lab reports
(I shall post these, although they are in portuguese)
- some LaFeSi samples which were not exactly mine, but belonged to the guy on the left (of whom you can see a right shoe)
- a few paper-eater bugs that seemed to be specially fond of some abstract books
- some of Daniel's porn dvds, this is still the right-shoe guy
(why do I deserve this is yet unclear)
- a couple of squid straws I had been trying to find for around two years (no I don't have a squid on a tank which I feed through a straw as some kind of experiment, take a look on wikipedia's article about it) it is just an ordinary straw for holding samples
- a Laue backscattering pattern from undergrad's XRD practice lab
- my physics grad student's association tea mug that was so far behind a drawer I thought I had lost it(coffee is one those things at which taste and smell don't agree, it smeells heavenly but the taste is disgusting)
- an empty box of chocolates
- pieces of an old keyboard
- page markers with funny Einstein's pictures
- and finally my most astonishing finding: an ant colony... I know this doesn't sound so extraordinary, but let me tell you where the colony was... They were living on my samples drawer, actually walking over my samples. Now, they are harmless to my samples but my samples are harmfull to any living creature. They contain things like arsenic and phosphorus, that after reacted are perfectly safe as long as you don't try to eat them... What I am sure they tried.
** Any remains of petrified food was removed long before, when I still thought the ants were there for something ants normally eat.
Well, in the end I binned loads of paperwork, burned the quantum mechanics test, killed the bugs, demanded Daniel to remove the DVDs as I refused to touch them (I prefer to remain ignorant on what he used to do while watching them in between squid measurements), and seriously considered capturing some of the ants and take them to the Biology Institute so that they could identify this newly-evolved arsenic-resistant species of ants, or at least putting together and ant farm.
As I said, it is weird, isn't it?
This requires a little background description first. I am a 4th year PhD student at Unicamp, applied physics division. My lab is a mess of paperwork, funny equipments and dangerous samples.
We have one big lab full of furnaces (something quite nice during the winter but somewhat complicated during the summer... which comprehends most of the time in Brazil) and a mezanine on top, where we students stay.
This is what my desk looked like around a week before I decided to clean it... At the time I was leaving to the Sincrotron Lab near Unicamp, thus the bag.
Following the lead from the original post, here is what I found:
- name cards (or dog colars, as I like to call them) for a 2002 internal student's conference
- someonelse's quantum mechanics test (???)
- my old list of really stupid things students write on their lab reports
(I shall post these, although they are in portuguese)
- some LaFeSi samples which were not exactly mine, but belonged to the guy on the left (of whom you can see a right shoe)
- a few paper-eater bugs that seemed to be specially fond of some abstract books
- some of Daniel's porn dvds, this is still the right-shoe guy
(why do I deserve this is yet unclear)
- a couple of squid straws I had been trying to find for around two years (no I don't have a squid on a tank which I feed through a straw as some kind of experiment, take a look on wikipedia's article about it) it is just an ordinary straw for holding samples
- a Laue backscattering pattern from undergrad's XRD practice lab
- my physics grad student's association tea mug that was so far behind a drawer I thought I had lost it(coffee is one those things at which taste and smell don't agree, it smeells heavenly but the taste is disgusting)
- an empty box of chocolates
- pieces of an old keyboard
- page markers with funny Einstein's pictures
- and finally my most astonishing finding: an ant colony... I know this doesn't sound so extraordinary, but let me tell you where the colony was... They were living on my samples drawer, actually walking over my samples. Now, they are harmless to my samples but my samples are harmfull to any living creature. They contain things like arsenic and phosphorus, that after reacted are perfectly safe as long as you don't try to eat them... What I am sure they tried.
** Any remains of petrified food was removed long before, when I still thought the ants were there for something ants normally eat.
Well, in the end I binned loads of paperwork, burned the quantum mechanics test, killed the bugs, demanded Daniel to remove the DVDs as I refused to touch them (I prefer to remain ignorant on what he used to do while watching them in between squid measurements), and seriously considered capturing some of the ants and take them to the Biology Institute so that they could identify this newly-evolved arsenic-resistant species of ants, or at least putting together and ant farm.
As I said, it is weird, isn't it?
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By NoteMe, # 21. January 2008, 18:57:35
Although I work with magnetic materials CERN is on top of the "labs I must visit" list.
Maybe when I am back in Netherlands.
By LuaCaron, # 21. January 2008, 19:10:34
seu inglês me impressionou
entendi algumas coisas
PHD na Unicamp né
legal legal
looooool
By Edd914, # 22. January 2008, 23:06:29
doing Phd...........impressive!!Physics is interesting till senior secondary(10+2) level but tough too.Once i topped(err from the reverse order) in my class test..... 2/15!!!!!
By liquid snake, # 3. March 2008, 17:09:57
By LuaCaron, # 3. March 2008, 17:37:33
By liquid snake, # 3. March 2008, 17:42:54