Fun science moments
Dec. 5th, 2016 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
-When a scientist you admire comes up to you at the end of a talk to talk excitedly about different perspectives on nutrient regulation
-When you discover that the random person hanging out late in the lab is shaving particles off of a humpback whale barnacle in order to quantify oxygen isotope ratios and figure out where the whale has migrated. And he's doing it because he will then do a similar procedure on a rare humpback whale barnacle fossil.
-Talking with grad students who are trying to figure out how to measure the respiration rates of small beetles and tiny jumping spiders
-Chatting with another grad student who wants to learn how certain butterflies manage to develop transparent "windows" in their wings
-Bumping into the student who is flying geckos in a vertical wind tunnel (large fan pointing up in the air - but with the air flow carefully standardized)
But really, the humpback whale barnacle story took the cake today. :^)
-When you discover that the random person hanging out late in the lab is shaving particles off of a humpback whale barnacle in order to quantify oxygen isotope ratios and figure out where the whale has migrated. And he's doing it because he will then do a similar procedure on a rare humpback whale barnacle fossil.
-Talking with grad students who are trying to figure out how to measure the respiration rates of small beetles and tiny jumping spiders
-Chatting with another grad student who wants to learn how certain butterflies manage to develop transparent "windows" in their wings
-Bumping into the student who is flying geckos in a vertical wind tunnel (large fan pointing up in the air - but with the air flow carefully standardized)
But really, the humpback whale barnacle story took the cake today. :^)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-06 05:56 pm (UTC)All of these are charming.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-06 08:38 pm (UTC)You've hit the one thing I miss about academia: the wide variety of nifty projects that one can hear about and talk about. Industryland does nifty things too, but we don't talk about them.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-07 03:51 am (UTC)