My research (high tech, eh?)

My current term research project (yes, I've started adopting the Canadian PROE-ject pronunciation to avoid standing out) involves ziploc bags, heat lamps, drying ovens, and a scale with a 0.01 gram resolution. No, my research is not, "Throughput Optimization of Methamphetamine Production in an Improvised Laboratory Setting."

It actually has to do with work on measuring moisture content of wood as a function of electrical resistance--it's a well known technique; I'm just trying to refine a subset of the work; maybe calculate some coefficients for wood species that haven't been tested. For interest to the extra-geeky, people have spent time working on really high-tech methods to determine wood moisture content, including gamma ray attenuation, nuclear magnetic resonance, and time domain reflectometry. I've even seen a presentation on these methods: the bottom line was, "well, it's really cool-looking technology, but it doesn't work that well." So much for a particle accelerator for my lab.

This brings me to the point that the research materials I'm using are pretty darn low tech--ziploc bags, construction tape, telephone wire, drying oven, tupperware containers. Also, there are no lab supply stores that sell "research grade 2x4s"--you just have to cut out your samples from a stud. Most of the time, I find this setup pretty cool.. but it's occasionally depressing when I think of all the toys people in other fields get to play with.

Grr.. annoyed though. The software I use to upload photos to my blog is only on my laptop, which is currently having its brain replaced. So sad. I'll put something up later.

Arg. I should be tooling.