A little affection goes a long way

I'm wanted! No, not as a criminal - as an employee. No one has ever wanted me this much. I feel so special :) How cool is it that I have a business card?! (I DO understand the GradDipTch is almost completely irrelevant here, but where else do I get to brag about it?!) As you can probably tell, I have never had one before. AND! I've got my name on a door! Not just ANY door - the door to the corridor which houses my half-cubicle which is my office! PS> I scrubbed all the interesting bits off my business card cos there are freaky people on the internet. Like You!

So I am quite enjoying my new job so far. As you know (from my fancy-pants business card), I'm a research assistant for the Measurement Standards Lab (MSL). Within MSL there is Temperature and Humidity, Length, Chemical, Electrical, Light, Mass and Pressure and Time and Frequency. I am in Temperature and Humidity. So, these people are fundamentally the core of all measurements we use today i.e. keeping International Standards up to date in NZ so we can keep up with the rest of the world. As it happens, the scientists I'm working with are ridiculously intelligent (who would have thought?) and one of them is quite internationally know and regarded as an expert on contact temperature measurements. His text books sell for $250 - I got one for free :) Another cool fact: the Time and Frequency group keep the atomic clocks from which official NZ time is taken going just across the corridor from my lab. How special.

So in my first week which was last week I was taken on mini-tours of other parts of IRL. I saw the workshop guys making a machine to thread superconducting cables; the magnets guy who explained with gusto the advantages of electromagnets using superconducting cables as opposed to old fashioned copper cabling (that was very interesting - no sarcasm. Turns out that an 3-4 Tesla (the biggest possible old-style) electromagnet with copper cabling would be about 2 tonnes I think he said and needs a huge motor to drive it. He showed me a 5 Tesla superconducting electromagnet which was about 30x40x40cm and was running off mains power.); a gentleman doing research into virtual surround speaker systems on a theatre-scale as well as in-home. I can't remember all the interesting things I learnt on my tours. But here are a few things I've learnt so far:

• basically, the deeper you can insert a Platinum Resistance Thermometer (PRT) into the thing whose temperature it is measuring, the more accurate the reading will be
• a Triple Point of Water Cell is worth approximately $4500
• when a superconducting material is cooled below its critical point it deflects magnetic field lines (this one's worth a look)
• having conversations over lunch with scientists is a whole different story to 'normal' people. They didn't like it when I compared them to 'normal' people. Let's just say non-scientific people.
  

Also: the coolest thing I've learnt so far. There is such a word as Manometer! I get the giggles whenever I think about it. Dictionary.com defines it as

"an instrument for measuring the pressure of a fluid, consisting of a tube filled with a liquid, the level of the liquid being determined by the fluid pressure and the height of the liquid being indicated on a scale."

But I like to think of it as a scale women can use to detect the compatability, sense, sex skills, and stick-ability of a potential partner ;)

ANYWAYS....

We are going to Opotiki this long weekend. I'm looking forward to it, haven't been up there since January. Which actually isn't that long ago, but seems like ages.

By the way, sorry for taking so long to blog for you guys. I know you forgive me :)

Also, just cos its as funny as it is disturbing:
Adrian and I are making a bookcase thing as a wee project at home on the weekends. We went to Mitre 10 Mega to buy all the bits and pieces and bought a hideously cheap set with saw, measuring tape, knife etc and it came with a builder's pencil, you know the flat (usually red) ones. Adrian thought he was so cool when he got home that he stuck it behind his ear and said "Look, I'm a proper builder now!" I wasn't laughing when I said "Um, it's not sharpened".
I guess you had to be there but Adrian got the girly giggles and it was just funny cos a builder wouldn't get very far with an un-sharpened pencil.

Whatever.

xxx