The engineering expo brought more than 2700 people through my lab over the course of three days this weekend. Managing the throng of humanity (much less a bunch of snotty middle-schoolers (or mischievous fifth graders) proved to be an exhausting -- but rewarding -- task. [Snotty middle-schoolers give you more respect when you warn them about how the warning tape they've been casually flaunting around is there for a reason. ;)]
All in all, it was pretty fun. We had a helium glow plasma running inside the vacuum vessel, so people could go up and poke their heads right up to the machine and see a real live plasma (at a relatively cool 20,000 degrees Celsius). I ended up talking myself hoarse, but it was worth it. I remember taking tours of nifty science stuff when I was in grade school and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Now I get to work in such a place! Not fun, however, was the button making. We made over 3,000 buttons (personal favorite: "Cheeseheads for Fusion") but were out before closing. That was time-consuming! ;)
I ended up poking my head around our basement lab hallway ceiling this evening. Despite working from 7 AM to 7 PM, I successfully ran about a mile of cable for my new toy at work -- the Plasma Control System. I've been designing it since November, and all the parts are finally here; the fun part of assembling them has arrived! (What could be niftier than a Linux box with dual processors -- except one that has another Linux box running inside of it as an embedded processor system? I'm still geeking out about that!)
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