Breaking expensive stuff
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 7:18 pm
Hello everybody,
maybe you've noticed that I havent been mic spamming as much as usaul of late, that because im doing an awesome project at the condensed matter institute of my University. I study physics and in the second year we have a project. I am doing something with a magnetic force microscope ( wikipedia is ur friend ). Its like bringing a tiny needle extremely close to the surface of objects with magnetic structure and then scanning it. The needle ( which is only thousands of a millimeter in size ) is magnetised and feels the magnetic structure. We scanned hard discs and recorded tapes to practise and we also did 40 nm thick films of GdFe5. Pretty awesome. After a couple of days I was allowed to handle the 100 000 euro machine. It went well. I only broke about eight tips ( where the needle is attached to ) of 50 euros each during the measurements.
Today was the final day and it went wrong. I accidently made a typo and turned the power on the magnetic field thrice the absolute max. I could hear things moving because of the huge magnetic field. It turned out te be fine, pfew. Then after replacying the tip and checking the sample I let the computer lower the tip. It took to long so I went to check out what was happening and the computer did not stop lowering the tip, so the tip was completely crushed. another 50 euros and time wasted cleaning the stuff with nitrogen.
Today I destroyed a total of 150 euros worth of tips and almost destroyed the 100 000 euro MFM. Did you ever ( almost ) destroy something very expensive?
maybe you've noticed that I havent been mic spamming as much as usaul of late, that because im doing an awesome project at the condensed matter institute of my University. I study physics and in the second year we have a project. I am doing something with a magnetic force microscope ( wikipedia is ur friend ). Its like bringing a tiny needle extremely close to the surface of objects with magnetic structure and then scanning it. The needle ( which is only thousands of a millimeter in size ) is magnetised and feels the magnetic structure. We scanned hard discs and recorded tapes to practise and we also did 40 nm thick films of GdFe5. Pretty awesome. After a couple of days I was allowed to handle the 100 000 euro machine. It went well. I only broke about eight tips ( where the needle is attached to ) of 50 euros each during the measurements.
Today was the final day and it went wrong. I accidently made a typo and turned the power on the magnetic field thrice the absolute max. I could hear things moving because of the huge magnetic field. It turned out te be fine, pfew. Then after replacying the tip and checking the sample I let the computer lower the tip. It took to long so I went to check out what was happening and the computer did not stop lowering the tip, so the tip was completely crushed. another 50 euros and time wasted cleaning the stuff with nitrogen.
Today I destroyed a total of 150 euros worth of tips and almost destroyed the 100 000 euro MFM. Did you ever ( almost ) destroy something very expensive?
