Week 2
Or "I will never look at tea rings in my mug the same way again."
Imagine that you want to put a nice, uniform, THIN layer of something -- say mud or jelly or teeny tiny spheres -- say, the size of bowling balls for Whos from Whoville (that live on a dust speck on a clover in Horton Hears a Who, so you know their bowling balls would be tiny) on a glass. How would you do it?
You might lay the glass horizontally and count on gravity and luck to make your layer of gold Whoville bowling balls uniform, but what if you put those bowling balls -- so teeny they won't settle out -- in a solution, stood the glass upright and let the stuff deposit on the glass as the liquid evaporated away? Just like when you make yourself a cup of coffee and get distracted and when you come back and drink a little, there's a ring inside your mug from the little bit that evaporated while you were gone. (It's worse when you drink your coffee with milk.) That is how I've been depositing teeny tiny 12 nanometer spheres of gold onto squares of glass. Making gold milk and letting the glass sit for 20 minutes or so.
It's a lot cooler than it sounds.
Meanwhile, my I-can-do-this-Scarf is progressing a little slowly. It's about 5". I don't think it will be 5 feet in 7 more weeks, but a girl can dream.
In other news, as I've been walking around town, I've found another small monument to inspire me: a statue of Benito Juarez who said,
"Respect for the rights of others is Peace."
Imagine that you want to put a nice, uniform, THIN layer of something -- say mud or jelly or teeny tiny spheres -- say, the size of bowling balls for Whos from Whoville (that live on a dust speck on a clover in Horton Hears a Who, so you know their bowling balls would be tiny) on a glass. How would you do it?
You might lay the glass horizontally and count on gravity and luck to make your layer of gold Whoville bowling balls uniform, but what if you put those bowling balls -- so teeny they won't settle out -- in a solution, stood the glass upright and let the stuff deposit on the glass as the liquid evaporated away? Just like when you make yourself a cup of coffee and get distracted and when you come back and drink a little, there's a ring inside your mug from the little bit that evaporated while you were gone. (It's worse when you drink your coffee with milk.) That is how I've been depositing teeny tiny 12 nanometer spheres of gold onto squares of glass. Making gold milk and letting the glass sit for 20 minutes or so.
It's a lot cooler than it sounds.
Meanwhile, my I-can-do-this-Scarf is progressing a little slowly. It's about 5". I don't think it will be 5 feet in 7 more weeks, but a girl can dream.
In other news, as I've been walking around town, I've found another small monument to inspire me: a statue of Benito Juarez who said,
"Respect for the rights of others is Peace."
posted by Gail | 5:46 PM
1 Comments:
You are doing all kinds of cool things out there!
Glad to know you get to walk around a bit, and aren't slaving over teensy gold beads to make coatings 24/7.
Missing you ...
Post a Comment
<< Home