Skip Navigation

User banner

drail

@ drail @fedia.io

Posts
2
Comments
24
Joined
2 yr. ago

PhD in Applied Nuclear and Particle Physics. I enjoy gardening, basketball (go Nuggets!), D&D, science, and hifi audio equipment.

Migrated here due to ongoing issues on kbin:kbin.social account page

  • Removed

    Participation in General Strike + Public Service Jobs?

    Jump

  • If you are in a financial position to do so, donating your wages for the day (or as much as you can afford) to an organization trying to affect positive change would show support without direct participation. If financial support isn't feasible at all, then just try to avoid spending any money day-of and share the importance of the strike with people you know. Every little bit of contribution helps, and we can't afford to let perfect be the enemy of good right now.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Accessing mbin as a firefox PWA is a nice way to use it outside of your main browser on mobile.

  • How did you fuck up recently?

    Jump

  • Very minor, but I very recently changed deoderant after not being able to find the one I usually use. I just got to a clinic for a medication infusion and it has completely worn off, being replaced by the smell of stress sweat from traffic, and now this poor nurse has to smell me while I get my medicine, so I am mortified.

  • DAAAAA Bears, DA Bears, DA Bears

    Jump

  • I was curious and looked, Jeppsons does actually sell malort spritzers sold in a can! Never seen one irl, so probably not very popular, but it does exist oddly enough

  • DAAAAA Bears, DA Bears, DA Bears

    Jump

  • Sip of malort is too much malort. I have to correct myself though, Jeppsons does sell malort spritzers sold in a can, which is more in line with how to actually use malort in making a cocktail, but still probably nasty.

  • DAAAAA Bears, DA Bears, DA Bears

    Jump

  • That is just a can of beer, I don't think you can get Malort in a can. Old Style is a cheap pilsner from the north mid-west

  • Right now I'm working myself up, I'm in the 4-5 range. How many pills do you plan on taking when you're older?

    Jump

  • Chrohns pill 4× daily, adderall 1-2× daily, multivitamin 1× daily, D-Vitamin 1× daily, so 7-8 per day. I am 29, so I have gotten a head start on my pill quota. I start back up on injections for Crohns next week, so four of those should be going away in the next month or so.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Yup, though the $50K was specifically the R&D cost to develop a technique for making the lens. It used a nano-scale pattern on glass to focus light via diffraction, as opposed to standard refractive lenses or mirrors. The ultimate goal was to develop a process for manufacturing these lenses en masse, for deployment in a large particle detector where traditional lenses wouldn't work. They succeeded, and nowadays (6 years later), they can basically print the pattern using the same techniques as in microchip manufacturing. Back then, though, there was just then one prototype that represented that $50K of research, so I am really glad I didn't fuck it up haha

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • In my first year of grad school, I was visiting a colleague's lab and was asked if I wanted to test some of their new diffractive optics. I said sure and started toying with the big lens on the table, no gloves, no precautions other than trying not to drop/smudge it. After about 5 minutes of geeking out over the fact that a perfectly flat, transparent lens was focusing the light, I asked how much it would cost to get one sent to my lab for an experiment I was working on. He said that it was the only one of its kind in existence, but the manufacturing r&d cost for it was over $50K alone. My heart nearly fell outta my chest.

  • Cleaned cat pee out of my computer monitor

    Jump

  • The smell was anything but dull, but the clean up itself was pretty monotonous. Better than canning my monitor though!

  • Cleaned cat pee out of my computer monitor

    Jump

  • Thanks!

    This is the first time they have ever done this, so I am not too worried. On the rare occassion they mark, it is usually at ground level.

    I have tried dried orange slices to protect my xmas tree, but they just knocked the fruit off and played with them haha. The only deterrent I have found with them is fake pine scent, which I hate as well, so I think I'll just keep my office door closed when I am not in it

  • Dullsters @dullsters.net
    drail @fedia.io

    Cleaned cat pee out of my computer monitor

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • I am very happy that 75% of my PhD in particle physics was hands-on lab work doing detector R&D. Sure, creating simulations and doing data analysis are immensely important, and skills I had to develop, but I think that many scientists are being done a disservice by not getting the opportunity to see how their work will interface in the real world.

  • Removed

    Super Prison

    Jump

  • It is the only scent that gives me a headache, and I think its overrated on top of that. Give me a minty, give me pine-y, give me fruity, literally any other scent profile.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • The assignment was to infodump, so I will take that as a compliment. I was aiming for detailed and hyperspecific.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • I've seen things. Things you'd never understand. All I can say is that the best dissertation defense is a good dissertation offense. So much blood on my hands...

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • I am now Dr. Drail, so it went well! This was back in August, so I am still in recovery mode while I job search.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Here goes:

    During my dissertation, I was lookig for information on the emissiom of 172nm scintillation light in mixtures of gaseous Xe and CO2 (95:5% - 98:2%), with results being difficult to come by. I found a collaborator who had tested this at lower CO2 concentrations (0-0.5%), but nothing else, no predictions or generalizable applications. Not knowing the optimal search engine terms or what textbook to look in for rules governing gaseous light emission, I ended up looking in fluorescence chemistry papers (my previous field of study) which had something called the Stern-Volmer relation for different concentrations of quenchant in a fluorescent solution. I figured gas scintillation queching was probably similar to liquid fluorescence quenching, but the standard relation didn't quite fit below 10% additive.

    I dug around more and found a modification of this relation for diffusion-limited quenching of fluorescent solutions (the same limitation imposed in gas mixtures, quenching due to random Brownian collisions) that employed an exponential term, allowing for a smoother curve down to low additive concentrations. This perfectly matched the available data and allowed me to model the predicted behavior. I discussed this with the one member of my committee who was available, an organic chemist (my PI was on vacation, everyone else was sick, and my dissertation defense was in 2 weeks). He said my reasoning and math for using this formula made sense and gave me a thumbs up to include this analysis. When my PI came back from holiday, he asked me why I didn't use some equation generally used in the field, or even just a generic exponential fit. I was ignorant of his suggestion, but it provided the same general formulation as Stern-Volmer, though Stern-Volmer was more rigorously derived mathematically.

    Mixing fields is super cool and can allow a much deeper understanding of the underlying principles, as opposed to limiting yourself to one branch of science. While my PI's recommendation would have given approximately the same answer, understanding and applying Stern-Volmer allowed me to really dig at the principles at play and generate a more accurate and in-depth model, which I managed to write up and defend at the 11th hour.

  • Removed

    What are some excellent YouTube channels you recommend?

    Jump

  • North of the Border

    His name is Adam and he likes to make tiny nerdy things. He makes dioramas of nerdy stuff, sometimes normal, some times with too many teeth, fingers, and/or toes.

  • Walking into Pfizer or Eli Lilly

    Jump

  • The SEM+EDS machine in one of my school's materials labs ran 98 and there was exactly one thumb drive on campus that was allowed to be used if you wanted to pull data. The lab coordinator had to pull the output file to his computer and email them, but made it sound like the biggest inconvenience in the world if you, ya know, wanted your data.

  • Bring back 24 hour Walmarts

    Jump

  • What state are you in, if you don't mind me asking? I just moved from Dallas to Los Angeles and there are Wincos in both, just kind of out of the way.

  • Science Memes @mander.xyz
    drail @fedia.io

    Forget LabSnacks and Photon Food, this is the cross-promotional deal we need.

    imgur.com /a/7TSX7rD