A quick and funny story from the lab this week that I think does a nice job encapsulating the day-to-day in experimental work/#phdlife...
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So we had a subsystem test planned for our hypersonic wind tunnel and as we’re going through the checklist our high-pressure air compressor for some reason won’t turn on. Grad students are baffled. Nothing has changed since the last test!
I ask (seriously) “is everything plugged in? Is everything turned on?” Because trust me I’ve spent hours debugging a problem in the lab only to find out something wasn’t plugged in. So frustrating when it happens. This is the type of insight you get from a PhD 😂
The students are certain they’ve checked all switches and plugs, so press forward with the multimeter checking all our leads and connections for shorts, etc. “I’m sure we’ll find it in an hour or so if we’re thorough”
About an hour later, excited yet exasperated, the students inform me they’ve fixed the problem.
“What was it?”
“Someone pressed the E-stop button”
So now we know our E-stop works as designed!!
“What was it?”
“Someone pressed the E-stop button”
So now we know our E-stop works as designed!!
