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07 September 2001
Member Questions
I have thought of electrolysis nickel plating a 12 in diam by 24 in long plastic sewer tube and sandwiching it between a steel and a glass plate. I don't know what the outgassing properties will be but it would still be cumbersome to unmount the whole thing.
A 5 gal. glass carboy with the appropriate reinforcing rings glued with the right epoxy might do the trick.
What I have at the moment is an outside pool filtration vessel with the bottom part sawed off (It was broken) and the top part that had the valving system replaced with a round plexiglass sheet. It withstands the pressure because of it's nature but being PVC it outgasses a whole lot ( I think ). I don't know if I have a gross leak but when I put a piranni gauge directly at the inlet of the rotary vane pump it gives me a reading of 7.5x 10-4 Torr . If hook it up on my setup the pressure drops to 10-2 Torr and with all valves closed it rises Rapidly to 1 Torr and stops at that pressure. I'm very much confused. Is it outgassing ? A small leak or is it something that I don't understand.
Please excuse my writing as I am bilingual ( French and English ) but French is my native language. Thank you for writing back to me :-)
Sincerely,
Editor's Note: If anyone has any ideas that might be helpful, we encourage you to write to Robert. Thanks! -SG
An E-Publishing Outlet for Amateur Scientists
Hi Dr. Carlson,
A while ago you visited Illinois Wesleyan University and talked with a small group of physics students in the afternoon. I was one of those who spoke with you and also stood around with you at the IWU President's house after your talk.
After your visit I became very interested in SAS and became a member either that afternoon or the next day. I plan to become a professional experimental physicist (I will do my graduate work at Cornell University) and I have a growing interest in making science not only more accessible to the general public, but making it actually worth it for them to learn science and physics in a general way. I think SAS is a great organization that can help in this goal and I would like to start being a more integral part of SAS.
Unfortunately, I don't have the financial resources to support SAS, but I do have an idea on how I can provide a valuable service to the SAS members.
I am the publisher of an on-line literary webzine and eBook publishing company called Dynamic Patterns (http://www.dynamicpatterns.com). The webzine is continuously published and allows readers to interact with each work by responding to what they have read. In this way, authors can receive immediate feedback on their work and readers can feel like they are a part of our literary community with their contributing remarks.
For SAS, Dynamic Patterns can provide an e-publishing outlet for members (particularly the amateur scientists) to publicly present their work for others to review and critique. Members could publish their research, essays, philosophies, ideas, etc. and others can immediately respond providing comments, critiques and guidance. The authors can then update their work if they wish to incorporate their feedback and all versions with the respective feedback can remain published.
This (free) e-publishing service can be an important learning tool for members to improve their written communication of scientific ideas and findings. In addition, professionals and project leaders can also e-publish review articles and other information to give the members a better foundation for the research projects they are involved with, or just give them the opportunity to learn some cool science in an amateur-friendly sort of way (and I'm referring to other professionals and students as well who are learning about other fields).
All copyrights will remain with the author and they may freely publish elsewhere (unless we e-publish someone's work that requires a small purchase, for instance a large review work written by a professional).
These are just some brainstormed ideas, but I would like to know what you think. Again, I am very interested in becoming a more integral part of SAS and feel that I can best provide my expertise in this sort of way.
Thank you for your time and dedication to SAS,
Matthew
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Matthew T. Dearing ~ Undergraduate Research Assistant
Laboratory for Mesoscopics & Quantum Microscopies
Department of Physics, Illinois Wesleyan University
http://dynamicpatterns.com/research/Publisher ~ Dynamic Patterns Literary eCommunity
Webzine & eBook Publishing
http://www.dynamicpatterns.com
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