Other Noteworthy Things Involved in What I Do

This page is the area where I explain some of my projects I am currently working on, as well as those that have been completed in the very recent past but are relevant still. Any questions about them are welcome and can be submitted by way of the feedback page and will be answered in some way or another... Some things simply don't fall into a particular category, but are unusual enough to merit documentation.

I found this little toxic gift when I was digging through a pile of old x-ray experiment assemblies and other junk in a box. Some idiot years ago wrote the label in pencil, which is near impossible to read, but if you look really carefully, it just says "BERYLLIUM". Thanks a lot for a test tube of beryllium dust and chips. Beryllium is, to say the least, very bad for humans. I certainly would not like constant pneumonia leading to death. A second view of the test tube of beryllium. Beryllium would be an amazing material to use, given its incredibly high heat conductivity, strength, and extremely lightweight nature. The only downsides are the scarcity, but that might be a blessing, given its toxicity to living things.

I took this thing apart with no context of where it came from or what it does, and I still have no clue as to what it was supposed to do. The base it made out of large pieces of aluminum oxide, the rods at the bottom are very strong magnets, and the base has a tiny antenna mounted inside the tube. The metal forming the tube shows discoloration from exposure to extreme temperature gradients, and my best guess is that this was some part of a LN2 superconduction microwave frequency experiment. I plan on using the parts to make a collimated electron beam source, similar to how they collimate the beam at SLAC. This is my screenquarium and my vacuum tube xmas tree.