Bring Out the City Bikes, Five Days of Påske, The Life of a Scientist

Godt Påske everyone! It's a sunny and clear Easter afternoon from København!

So much time has passed since I last wrote and I have forgotten many things I wanted to write. Research has ramped up to a new level and I'm finding myself less motivated to pause and blog. The mood just hasn't taken me recently.

Spring has come full force, evidenced most recently to me by the appearance of the København Cykler (city bikes) for tourists and citizens alike. These simple sturdy bicycles come out in April and disappear around October. It's a cool system where you slide a 20 kr coin into a box on the handlebars and a chain at the other end of the box slides out. The rider takes the bike around town and, when finished, finds an empty chain slot and gets the coin back. Free city bikes! I've been working with students on campus back home to get a similar program going, but interest really hasn't built for it yet. I think it has to do mostly with the hilly Golden landscape and the preference for cars over all other transportation modes. Perhaps someday bikes will carry more cultural weight in America...

On a related note, I was riding my bicycle to the train station about a week ago and was handed free food by a smiling woman standing on a street corner. She and several dozen others were passing out brown bags containing rolls to all the pedaling folk as they passed by on the bike lanes. And so I was introduced to "Vi cykler arbejde!" meaning "We bike to work." It's a month-long campaign and I'm hoping to snag some more free baked goods this week!

Denmark today is a dominantly secular nation. There are many churches around town, mostly Lutheran, though I've found several Roman Catholic and even a Baptist one. A Mormon temple sits three blocks from my apartment. Yet, congregations are small and some of the churches hold services once a month. Even with the relatively large population of immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other Middle Eastern nations, I have yet to see any mosques or even a hint of Islamic worship places. In fact, other than all the Arabic (I think) script I see in my neighborhood, on grocery stores, restaurants, and barber shops, the only advertisement for Muslims I've glimpsed was a small store selling "Islamic dress," printed in English. Going back to the Christian influence, something of a juxtaposition with the agnostic majority are all the Danish flags being flown half-mast for Good Friday. I've only ever seen that ritual connected with memorializing the deaths of politicians, military casualties, and other famous people. Jesus Christ, VIP in Denmark, for one day only.

While actually practicing religion seems to be rare, religious holidays are taken to the max. Easter, for instance, is five days long. Starting (Maundy) Thursday, many Danes don't go back to work till the follwing Tuesday. There's Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Second Easter (Monday). Most shops shut down, though some of the grocery stores, which are regularly closed on Sundays, are open, so there appears to be no uniformity to the holiday-taking. At Risø, most of the technicians left Friday, April 3 and won't be back till Tuesday (4/14). That's all well and good for them, but the safety rules at the lab prevent anyone from working with the furnaces, presses, polishers, and other various (and expensive) equipment unless they're in there. Here, like mismatched gears, the '9-3 regular-drop-it-all-and-scoot' work day (technicians) grinds up against the '?-? gotta-get-this-done-by-Monday-why-does-this-machine-hate-me' schedule (scientists). Such fun! Jesting aside, I really am enjoying the hustle and constantly shifting timelines that go with real-world R&D. I think I'm going to like doing this for a living.

Accepted!

Today I received a metaphorical kick in the rear: acceptance to speak at the 17th bi-annual Conference on Solid State Ionics! This round it's in Toronto, June 28 - July 3. The way it fits in my overall overseas overture, I'll most likely be heading straight to Denver from Canada afterward, since my Danish visa expires July 15. Plus, I'd soon avoid having to de-lag three times in two weeks, and go through that ritual only once.

Now, I'm accountable not only to my bosses in Denmark and Colorado to produce results, but also a slew of international conferencing scientists, coming together for a week of swapping ideas, innovations, and business cards.

I've had some difficulties in research these past few weeks, but this announcement has throttled me forward a few gears and knocked me out of the delay-ridden doldrums. Yay!

Speaking at the conference will be my first big event as a graduate student, and I'm excited to put some of the hard work done here at Risø on display.

Ts'all for now, time to work!

Snowing Thick, Quirky Sciencing, Pay To Dispose Your 'Private' Waste Publicly

(ahem)

A post mingled with a few just-barely-not-crude topics...

The eminent infinite complexity (the EIC, or "ike" forthwith), that is Earth's Nature, deigned to bestow a bit 'o home on me today, in the form of an all-day (so far) snowstorm. Ths is the first white, wet, coldness that hasn't evaporated by 10am; in fact it's still patching over each footprint, wheel rut, and drain cover as I type. Looks a bit like Colorado out there today...beautiful.

Without the courtesy of a segway, I'd like to mention a detail of the labwork I've been doing recently. In quick summary I'm taking very fine ceramic powders and pressing them uniaxially (like one of those can crushers mounted on walls) into pill-size pellets, about the width of my middle finger. They must be as dense as possible, and for that we have a more powerful machine called an isostatic press. Covering my bases, all this means is an equal force exerted on the pellet from all sides, tops, and bottoms, simultaneously. Any air jammed inside the structure is evicted this way. Evacuated, actually, and to ease this trapped this trace atmosphere's exit, the pellets must be vacuumed sealed before going in the isostatic press. Naturally. A vacuum pump's easy to come by here at the lab, but what to seal the pellets in before transport to yon machine?

Hmmm...

How 'bout a condom, says brilliant scientist?* Of course! Why didn't I think of that? A 'rubber' is a great way to keep _____ sealed inside!**

So, Dear Reader, at this multi-million kroner, government funded, PhD-filled research facility, a critical step in fabricating high tech ceramic test samples comes down to a 15 cent condom. Awesome! Does this whole situation crack you up like it does me? Maybe I'm just very strange, but hardly anyone I talk to about this fact finds it even mildly amusing. A shame. I think it's hilarious.

Again, without segway, the last item on my writeabout list is the state of Danish public restrooms. When I left for Denmark, I had already heard of there being a general lack of these pit stops available in European countries (this is also the case for drinking fountains, but see Jan. 16 post for why that is so, at least in DK). Out of all the farewells I received from friends and family, the most humorous was to compile a tally of all the coin-operated toilets I ran into during my travels (you know who you are that suggested this). I've neglected that light-hearted duty, but the obervation stands in my mind after repeated scenarios where I need to go and there's no decent going to be gotten for miles around. Not in grocery stores, malls, or train stations anyhow. Occasionally a restaurant will have them, with varying shades of vandalism. At Roskilde train station you have to put in a 2 kroner coin to get in the door. This measure prevents all the honest bums from getting in and sleeping the cold nights away, or the rambunctious youths with sharpies, spray paint, and bottomless dictionaries of bad puns and sick jokes. I found a McDonald's right next to Nørreport station (deep downtown Kbh) with the same fixup. There I was fortunate enough to see the 'changing of the change,' in which an employee empties the handle-mounted box of coins and resets the lock.

The water closets (so they're labeled) actually on the trains are free, so that's a bonus.

The takehome lesson on this final topic is that planning your bathroom stops (as well as you can) along with your trip agenda is the best strategy.


Peace to you.



*I haven't asked yet who came up with this idea. It's the first time I've seen it.
**This sentence should be a 'Mad-Libs' staple.

Abstracts, Serendipitious Poetry, A Harrowing Bus Boarding, Roquefort Rejected

(Lately I've been titling my blogs in a style Stephen King uses; see The Mist, The Little Sisters of Eluria. I like its summarizing fragmentary MO.)

Today dawned in New York as the deadline for abstracts concerning the 17th Conference on Solid State Ionics. This biannual grand palaver between a bunch of the world's solid state chemists, physicists, ceramicists et al. will be held this year in Toronto, Canada. Turns out both my advisor at Mines (Nigel) and my boss here at Risø (Mogens) are members of the organizing committee. Nigel told me late yesterday evening (my time) to submit an abstract, angling for a chance to present my work. Trouble is, I don't have any even barely scientifically rigorous 'work' to show for it (I just started in August for heaven's sake)! This fact doesn't phase Nigel in the slightest and Mogens calmly agrees. They told me to write up a proposal of sorts, conforming to the SSI organizers' guidelines, talking about what I will be doing in the next 6 months. These conferences work by amassing results people have obtained far in advance of the actual gathering, giving them time to refine, add, subtract, and work out professional presentations. Should my abstract be accepted (I'm proud of it), I will be doing all those things in tandem with the actual research needed to legitimize it all! What fun!

shift

I subscribe to the podcast "Poetry Off the Shelf," which updates once a week with a 10 - 15 minute program covering various news, tributes, history, and language in the universe of this wonderfully undefinable human art. I hadn't listened in since before Christmas 08, and when I updated the feed, the first cast was all about Inger Christensen, the recently late Danish poet. How uncanny that I should first hear it while in Denmark!

Two Danish-born poets living in New York (where the show's produced) were guests on the program. One of them actually traveled and gave readings alongside Inger, and reminisced fondly on those days. They played several soundbites of Christensen reciting her work. Her background fascinates me too. She grew up interested in mathematics and enjoyed playing with numbers as much as words. She incorporated math into some of her poems. Check out "Alphabet," where she crafts verses in groupings to mirror the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8...), assigning A to '1,' B to '1,' C to '2,' and so on, going all the way to O.

shift

Tonight I left my building late (the abstract's to blame), looking for one of the public Risø bikes to make the ride up to the guardhouse and adjoining bus stop, hoping to catch the 7pm line to Roskilde station and on out to København and home. But, to my slight frustration, the only remaining such cycle was broken (hence its presence half a kilometer out from the main gate at this hour). So, I walked the tree-lined lane expecting to wait for the 7:18 ride. As I stood at the stop eight or so minutes later, I saw the northbound 600S arriving at the Risø stop on the opposite side of the bridge carrying Frederiksborgvej over the entrance road to the lab. I hesitated maybe 10 seconds before running full tilt towards its idling bulk, hoping the driver would wait a half minute longer! I was able to see the bus would take me to Ølstykke station (another way to get to København, via the S-tog train system, a not-quite-metro-not-quite-regional-train network) and just as I confirmed this fact on the curbside time table, the bus began to pull away. I lunged forward and tapped (well, banged) the door with my hand and the driver (a middle-aged woman) slammed on the brakes while jumping half out of her seat in surprise. She clearly hadn't seen me sprinting to catch the 7:08 departure. The whole vehicle followed her movement and audibly protested the abrupt change in momentum. As I boarded and showed her my pass, she rebuked me in Danish and gave me the stink eye, two of them actually, complete with a frown/sneer. I didn't understand a word, except "nej," meaning "no," so the embarrassment was diminished.

shift

Home now. I bought grated cheddar cheese tonight. I've only been able to find it in one grocery store so far. The purchase recalled to my mind an article I found on The Washington Post's web page, covering the recent 300 % duty applied to Roquefort cheese, the blue-veined delicacy from southern France. I liked the story so much (for its eloquent journalism; I'm not rejoicing over the plight of cheese falling victim to international political tantrums) I decided to go find some of this cheese. I found my precious shredded cheddar instead and forgot all about the Roquefort till just now. Check out the article. The history of the cheese makers in Roquefort is fascinating.

Godnat, Dear Reader...

A Treatise on Cake

Cake: a multitudinous class of comestibles that carries significant weight here at Risø. Success in this national laboratory is measured by credible publications, healthy research grants, favorable press releases, and cake.

Cake is scheduled, often days or a even a week in advance. Everyone syncs their Outlook calendars, Gmail calendars, notifiers, and Entourage agendas with cake. E-mails are sent. Phone calls are made. Planners are marked. Kitchens are busy! Cake is good.

In snynonymity with 'party' or 'informal meeting,' a cake will be "thrown" for several reasons (that I know of so far). The obvious birthday cakes, wedding announcements, and anniversaries (of employment). Successful experiments, tests, arrival of new colleagues and equipment alike, and the 'christening' of lab stations. This last category was the reason for today's cake, given for the official naming of test rig 32 and declaration that it is ready for operation (meaning mostly debugged). It's new name is "Lichen" (after the plant), given by Chris, the American PhD student from Columbia University whom I am working closely with in my tenure here. He said he chose the name because all the other rigs and machines in the lab are either named after Norse deities or Earthly bodies of water, except for one, called Flower. He reasoned that 'flora' needed more representation.

The cake was good, a confection resembling chocolate brownies (after squaring it in its rectangular pan) with orange-flavored frosting and two slices of clementine cuties per piece. There was also a side dish of coconut balls layered with chocolate and sugar. Delicious!

Cake has the added feature of sparking technical discussions amongst us nerds, geeks, and engineers.* Today's topics included a thorough discussion of using gadolinium-doped ceria to absorb unwanted silica from the working atmosphere of a solid oxide fuel cell and solid oxide electrolysis cell test chamber, leak testing on "Lichen," the explosive tendencies of a custom-designed glycine-nitrate wet chemistry powder synthesis process, and the precise workings of an isostatic press machine in the context of fabricating dense ceramic electrodes from powders. One of the older researchers present, a Greek named Nikos, took us on a tangent about how he could float his ceramic powder down to the bottom of a trench in the Aegaen Sea on a nylon string and isostatically press it that way. Being nerds, geeks, and engineers,* we of course discussed (and joked) about the specifics of this pragmatically ludicrous suggestion.

Cake is good.


*redundant, but I included it for completeness' sake.