On Oct 6, 2010, at 12:40 PM, Dave N6NZ wrote: > I think a lot of people confuse the difference between a theoretical > physicist and an experimental physicist. > > A theoretical uses a whiteboard and marker. He/She writes a paper. > > An experimental physicist reads the paper and goes -- "Oh, really?". He/She > constructs experimental apparatus using scrap metal, some custom glassware > from the chemistry department glass blowing shop, an expensive sensor robbed > off of last year's project, a chunk of stainless steel turned on a lathe by > his/her own hands, some computer software, a little liquid nitrogen, and of > course duct tape. He/She writes another paper.
My entry into astrophysics was observing far infrared using stratospheric balloons. While the gondola had a nice rigid core structure, anything that didn't need rigidity we attached to the structure with white duct tape (the usual grey kind tends to melt in sunlight when there's not enough air around to carry off the heat). After that project, I moved on to shorter wavelengths, but some of the other folks stayed with IR. 10 years and three generations of telescope later, they launched IRAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAS). There wasn't any duct tape in that... > > The theoretical reads the second paper and has one of two reactions: > a) "I told you so." > b) "Well, that sucks." > > -dave (an EE with physicist friends....) > > On Oct 6, 2010, at 10:22 AM, John Doty wrote: > >> >> On Oct 1, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Rick Collins wrote: >> >>> Oh, I almost forgot, NEVER ask a PhD "anything" to design PCBs. What the >>> heck are you thinking??? >> >> Speaking as a physicist, let me comment. >> >> 1. Learning to do a variety of engineering tasks is an important part of an >> experimental physicist's education. A good experimental physicist must be a >> more versatile engineer than most engineering specialists. This is exactly >> the kind of job a Ph.D. student *should* be doing. >> >> 2. The specific problem mentioned was a "super noiseless detector circuit". >> Few EE's understand detector physics or noise physics well enough to tackle >> this. >> >> John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. >> http://www.noqsi.com/ >> j...@noqsi.com >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> geda-user mailing list >> geda-user@moria.seul.org >> http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > geda-user mailing list > geda-user@moria.seul.org > http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user > John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
