'Xtreme' Equipment That You Have Borrowed? 216
djupedal asks: "What's the most extreme type of equipment you've used from the lab/office/university, etc. for your own projects, etc.? Have you ever taken a piece of unknown lint into work just to check it out under the nuclear microscope? Ever used the UV curing oven on the production line to make custom wheels for an R/C car? Ever used the 100,000 ton press in the lab to meld a dime into a nickel just to have a present for your gf/bf on Valentine's Day?"
"Ever drop by the house on the way home from work and use your company's nuclear density gauge to check for hardpan in the backyard?
Was that you I saw driving a 50 ton crane into the sub-division just to have a platform to install a 3 meter dish on the roof of the garage?
Ever hog a T-3 so you could loop-logon on to your own box....after networking thru a minimum of 25 repeaters near the equator...just to see how much delay there is when going around the planet?
To get you started -- we used to work the night shift at a ski area - and when we found spare time, we would fire up a few of the $200,000.00 Kässbohrer PistenBully's and run off into the trees and play hide & seek in the dark, when it was snowing heavy and your tracks would be covered quickly. All lights out and nothing but iPods online, we would play tag until we either got lost, stuck, bored or the sun came up.
What's your best example of trivial use of some very expensive gear that wasn't yours?"
Spectrum analyzer radio (Score:4, Informative)
One day in the RF and Microwaves lab, we wanted to listen to some radio programme. Now, there were several kinds of receivers lying around, but most of them were in the higher frequency ranges.
Except for the HP140 series spectrum analyzers. These had a range going to 110 MHz, just right for FM broadcast radio.
So we made a simple antenna from a pair of wires that we stuck onto one of the windows, and connected this to the input of one of the HP-140 series spectrum analyzers. In addition to the convenient range, they had all kinds of nice filtering functions to limit bandwidth to an FM radio channel. We could even see the various broadcasting stations on the display.
These analyzers had a vertical output, to which we hooked up a linear power amplifier that originally was designed for driving a tele-coil system for the benefit of the hard of hearing. We hooked up this to a speaker that originally had been in someone's car but became surplus when they got a new stereo system.
By stopping the sweep and tuning the spectrum analyzer a little to the side of the frequency of interest, we got slope detection of the radio signal, and we got the sound of the station of interest.
Of course, the sound quality wasn't the best, obviously not stereo; and we noticed that the spectrum analyzer would slowly drift into and out of tune with the temperature variations of the day, so frequent readjustments were necessary. Fading was also noticed, but this wasn't too bad. Still, this set-up remained in use for quite a while, something around a year.
So this is how to make a set of $~10^4 equipment sound much like any old $~1 radio as found at flea markets, garage sales, or thrift stores...
Same sound for a 40 dB increase in price...
Re:Cryogenics (Score:3, Informative)
You want to be careful with LN2 and not just because it's so cold. Air is a bit heavier (no doubt someone will bring up dewpoints, density) than N2 but in a confined space liquid nitrogen will evaporate and displace oxygen.
The body needs oxygen, and inhaling gases that don't contain it causes the body to pull oxygen from other parts that do - this causes a system shutdown. You can't reboot, it is a true BSOD, no recovery possible (even if you use Linux).
Read this [bbk.ac.uk].