I've finished up one week of work now, and so far I've mostly just set up my experiment. It's basically a thin plastic sheet rolled into a cylinder and very carefully glued to itself. It's held in place by the aluminum contraption shown on the left. Almost all the metal pieces were machined here for the previous experiment (in which they twisted the column to see how it would buckle). My experiment involves poking the cylinder with the two micrometer screws shown on the right. You should be able to see that one screw rotates with the cylinder, and the other is fixed to the supporting rod on the right. Somehow I'll measure the force that they exert and how that changes when I rotate the cylinder (and one of the screws) so that the dimples aproach each other. When they get close enough to each other,
they'll annihilate and become one. As of now I haven't started taking any data, but hopefully that will begin soon. I've been reading lots of papers on thin surfaces and could tell you all about what happens when you deform them, but it would be difficult and probably uninteresting over a blog. You should be able toclick on the pictures to make them bigger. Post a comment if you have any questions!
I've finished up one week of work now, and so far I've mostly just set up my experiment. It's basically a thin plastic sheet rolled into a cylinder and very carefully glued to itself. It's held in place by the aluminum contraption shown on the left. Almost all the metal pieces were machined here for the previous experiment (in which they twisted the column to see how it would buckle). My experiment involves poking the cylinder with the two micrometer screws shown on the right. You should be able to see that one screw rotates with the cylinder, and the other is fixed to the supporting rod on the right. Somehow I'll measure the force that they exert and how that changes when I rotate the cylinder (and one of the screws) so that the dimples aproach each other. When they get close enough to each other,
they'll annihilate and become one. As of now I haven't started taking any data, but hopefully that will begin soon. I've been reading lots of papers on thin surfaces and could tell you all about what happens when you deform them, but it would be difficult and probably uninteresting over a blog. You should be able toclick on the pictures to make them bigger. Post a comment if you have any questions!
1 comment:
I love this blog and all the good information and the amazing translations. Unfortunately I am not well informed enough to understand what the machine is for. I'm sorry about all the pollution. I hope your cough is better soon, Lee.
-Steve Preskill
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