On Friday 16th September, Gordon Gould the inventor of the laser died. Gould claimed that the idea and principles for the laser came to him one afternoon in 1957. His lab book details his ideas on a page under the title “Some rough calculations on the feasibility of a LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission …
Category Archives: science
Off for a bit. Or Why I lothe and detest and want to maimstabmurderdeathkill powerpoint.
Tomorrow sees me heading off to Cardiff for the ISSC-15 conference. Just under a week of geeking my particular variety of science with a few hundred like minded individuals at the UK’s premier surface science conference. Looking at the program, the will be talks on everything from ablation (my field) to catalysis to xenon adsorption …
A break from thesis writing.
The one downside to have had some very good news yesterday[1] is that I now have to spend a week making material to send away. This means at least two whole days in the lab, with all that entails (sulphur smells, strobe flashes from the laser, noise from the laser and other gear, etc). Then …
The end of an era
At around 6am this morning (BST) the last Skylark sounding rocket blasted off from Swedish Space Corporation’s Esrange site, near Kiruna Sweeden. The Skylark was the last wholly designed UK rocket. First concived in 1955, the Skylark was at the forefront of low budget UK space science. In the 50 years since it first flew, …
RCA cleaning silicon
I’m sure the RCA process for cleaning silicon wafers was invented when Werner Kern got drunk in the lab one day and decided to have some fun… How else would any sane man come up with the idea of taking a half litre each of several of the most corrosive things you can image then …