Dr. Barnard [Scanning Electron Microscopy]: "The rough equivalent of a million-pound electron microscope's lenses is trying to make an optical microscope with the bottom of a Coke bottle."
Dr. Barnard: "Electrons don't scatter democratically."
Dr. Barnard: "You have to remember that most of the Professors in this department last did an experiment 20 to 30 years ago."
Dr. Barnard [yes, still talking about Electron Microscopy]: "The basic idea, then, is to hit the sample with something and see what happens, so we're really going back to caveman ideas. Obviously, things have become a bit more sophisticated over the last 20,000 years."
Dr. Stelmashenko [Vacuum Techniques]: "Automatic means human beings do it manually."
Dr. Wallach [Text Processing]: "If you go to all the trouble of writing a paper, submitting it at the last minute, because that's good academic practice..."
Dr. Wallach [Image Analysis]: "5 years ago, nobody knew anything about pixels, they thought they were something that ran around with fairies."
Dr. Wallach: "I'm not going to mention the hundreds of shape identifications because you can find all of this quite easily when you need to and I can't find them."
Dr. Oliver [Practical SPM]: "We used this method to remove periodic noise in lecture 2."
Dr. Oliver: "We can then solve the differential equation, which quite pleasingly has an analytical solution. [Skeptical looks from class]. They have to sometimes."
Dr. Midgely [Electron Tomography]: "...and that's why each of these atoms looks like a cigar"
Dr. Midgely: "This is a slide more for me than for you, really."
Dr. Harrison [Advanced Sample Preparation]: "This is just a schematic. Your sample may not have red layers running through a blue substrate."
Alan: "That's interesting, so the temperature increased when it was set on fire."
Alan: "Then there's 4.24, which is basically an aqueous laboratory."
Prof. Briggs: "From this you evaporate C60 molecules we bought from Argos or somewhere."
Briggs: "What this field has done is to make soot academically respectable."
Briggs: "We want to be able improve the state of the art by 14 orders of magnitude, which is quite a tall order in most fields."
Briggs: "Even if you're at the equator, Singapore is still not the same as Nairobi."
Briggs: "We are very, very prejudiced at Oxford against candidates who do not apply."
[misheard by SF]: "In polypeptides you have the C, O and N atoms which arrange into specific structures due to hedge funds"
Elsewhere
Rachel Oliver: "I have a [research] group, he's just over there."
Stuart: "Why are you eating your wife's brain?" -NickTaylor: "I need a reason?"
Enismirdal: Yes, I generally do have two hands. Except when I'm eating something messy.
[D life] Enismirdal: Today was pretty productive considering I didn't really do any work
Enismirdal: Organic sausages don't really compare with a round table
BBC Rugby Commentator: "He's wearing the sheriff's badge in the absence of [Italian player], who's here today..."
Ressurrecting this page for
Ashley: But they're sooo cute! I want to shoot them with my laser.
Illiterature Review
(Taken from a whinge on my livejournal): My literature review having unearthed a few papers in [journals published by Elsevier Science], I invariably find them to contain confusing and potentially misleading statements which I spend significant time having to decipher (and in one case I'm still not sure what they actually meant). Now, the first language of the authors of these papers is not English, but the first language of the editors is, and the function of scientific commuication is to, you know, communicate. Which means that the editors of a journal have a duty to see to it that such communications are relatively understandable.
I will be collecting the worst offences here.
"With a dispersion process using a mini-calander"
Do they mean colander? Or calender? Or did they actually use a baby lark?
"Polymer grafting, to improve the nanotube–polymer interface, has mainly been achieved on acid-treated nanotubes, which may result in partial destruction of the tubular framework."
"Recently, a new form of graphitic carbon needles has been discovered in carbon rods after an arc discharge by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy"
"Nanocomposites with interesting properties could be produced within the last years"
"Since being invented by Iijima in 1991, carbon nanotubes..."
Worst. Hypehnation. Ever: "Prior to bundle assembly, a film of gallium metal was evaporated onto the liquid nitrogen-cooled tips."
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