Yes, I can get bored very easily…

Yes, I have changed the layout of this blog yet again. Blogger just makes it way too easy. This one looked good since the colors sort of match the colors for my favorite drink, Moxie (I drink 4 liters of it a week – hey, I live in Maine and it’s the state drink). Maybe I’ll try something else in a few weeks.

And this simply confirms that I am from Buffalo…

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Northern You have a Northern accent. That could either be the Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland/Buffalo accent (easily recognizable) or the Western New England accent that news networks go for.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Ccccooold Quantum Computers

Here’s an interesting article from Scientific American about some folks at Delft who’ve made a nifty little CNOT gate at –459º F! Now that’s cold! Of course, it was in the Netherlands that Kamerlingh Onnes became known as “the gentleman of absolute zero” so there’s a bit of a historical precedent for this.

Newton’s First Law … of Hockey?

Click here.

Please note that I am a rabid Sabres fan and loyal Buffalonian so all jokes and negative comments will be deleted.

Vintage Stern-Gerlach device

After going through an old storage room, someone here at Saint A’s came upon a Stern-Gerlach experiment in a box (disassembled) made by the old Ealing Corp. which, at one time, was in South Natick, MA, but is now in California. They seem to be solely an optical company these days so I have little hope that they will be able to find a set of instructions (since there wasn’t one in the box). Has anyone out there seen one of these things and, if so, do you have any idea of how to put it together?

Update: Well, while a helpful guy at Ealing could find no information about such a device going back to 1969, my colleague Jeff found the instructions tucked away in the filing cabinet! As it turns out, the experiment was made in the mid-1960s (first manual apparently appeared in 1966) and was developed by a Melvin Daybell at New Mexico State University. It’s possible, then, that it was a custom job (which would explain why Ealing didn’t find it in any of their old catalogs), but does not explain how it came into our possession. Unfortunately, the faculty member who most likely obtained it for us (likely in the ’60s since his name appears on something in the folder dated 1967) has since passed away so we may never know (particularly since there is no Melvin Daybell presently at NMSU).

Update II:…and that is because Melvin Daybell is at USC!