Week 2

I'm posting this the Monday after this last week, and I am exhausted from the weekend. Unrelated to work, this past weekend has been a blast. I hit the Rockaway surf in Queens both Saturday and Sunday, and caught a few waves in the east coast for the first time. Good thing the waves on Sunday were pretty gentle, so I was able to teach my friend. But on Saturday, boy, it was firing. They were four-foot sets at the max (I know, dinky, call me a kook if you like), but they were coming in incredibly inconsistent; there would be nothing, then suddenly two, three sets that push you back into the crash zone. I was getting pounded, and getting into the lineup took work. It was good fun nonetheless. The ride back into Manhattan on the A train was also quite an occasion. I had just met another surfer, Manny, who was also taking the A train back. While on the platform, we ran into a man and woman who recognized my new friend because he had been rocking the surf all day with his blinding fluorescent shorts. They thought Manny and I knew each other, and we thought the man and woman knew each other. After a good two, three stops on the train, it turns out that none of us knew each other an hour before. I thought that was pretty funny. The ride on the A train back into Manhattan is at least one-and-a-half hour long, so might as well get comfortable. There were good vibes all around, and pretty soon our half of the subway car had broken the ice, and everyone was just talking and hanging out. Strangers got on, strangers got off, but the ice was broken.

That was my little New York moment. I guess I haven't taken the subway enough to make any claims, but the subway has generally felt like a silent cave of motionless beings sitting and standing around ignoring one another, anxiously waiting for their stop. But going out to Rockaway, it seems like the culture of neurosis melts away, and the atmosphere just relaxes. And these immobile subway statues suddenly come to life.

Anyway, last week feels like ages ago. That's my excuse for not really remembering what I did. Well, the big accomplishment I remember was that I was able to successfully run a test on the heating plate. While debating whether it was safe to test, my lab supervisor Ross said, "What's the worst that could happen?"
"A small fire?" I replied.
"Yea, you'd die. Maybe get electrocuted."
"That's not too bad, I've already inhaled a ton of lead from soldering, and they're doing asbestos removal in the office across the hall."
"Yea, you had a great run."
After some debating and bantering, we decided that Ross would be the one to check if I had really grounded the base plate. On a side note, never test conductivity by grabbing onto the plate. Just tap with the back of your hand, otherwise you might grab onto the plate if you do get electrocuted.

Unfortunately, there were no shorts and I grounded the plate safely, so Ross still has his eyebrows.

The melting point of LDPE (low density polyethlyene) is about 110 degrees C. That was the goal, and the setup of the resistors on the heat plate got past 110, so it was a success. That's pretty neat, as we were able to boil some water on this plate I had made. Plus, this heating itself is going to take place in a massive vacuum chamber, so there is no heat loss via convection, and also nearly impossible to start a fire.

[Finally, just for personal bookkeeping purposes:
Placed order for the PI temperature controller and LM35 temperature sensors.
Decided to go with a triac and optocoupler instead of a Solid State Relay.
Begin working on fabricating second heating plate.]