Notices by Geoff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (_thegeoff@mastodon.social)

Last full day of school for the 6th years today, they're off on study leave until the exams. So I ended up signing a lot of shirts, hats etc, and I bought the physics class a packet of fig rolls ("Fig Newtons") and a packet of Choco Leibniz so they could decide once and for all.

Anybody remember a UK kid's TV program from the 1980s about a boy who somehow came into possession of a mannequin leg that gangsters were after? "Someone's Leg", we think?

Nice catch on the #AllSkyCam. Early streak is a helicopter most likely. Then a nice red aurora on the left.

Nicest thing though, was the students "Sherlocking the heck out of it" with what they knew. They didn't nail it, but they went through the process of eliminating the impossible, in the five minutes we had, whilst bouncing off the walls. The latter is a given as 12yr olds, the former is our aim as a science dept.

Yup, I explained what was happening. The nice thing with this trick is that even when you know how it works, and I dip a test tube back into the glycerol, it *still* looks like magic as it disappears as it fills up. Hell,*I* think it's cool, and I'm the one doing the demo.

To their credit, whilst generally being amazed, several students (maybe 12 years old) voiced concerns. Maybe it wasn't actually magic? Maybe the unbroken test tube was there all along? But why didn't they see it, etc?
They've been studying refraction recently, so bonus. Plus I get to quote "any sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic:.

Today's April Fool gag, courtesy of an excellent school technician forum:

I stick a small test tube in a large beaker of glycerol. The borosilicate glass and glycerol have the same refractive index, so the test tube is basically invisible.

I explain that I've invented a perfect glue that even puts things back in place, smash a test tube, pour the broken glass in to the beaker (it disappears), stir, and pull out a complete test tube.

Yay, new What We Do In The Shadows on iPlayer!
(If you're not Familiar, a very funny vampire housemates mocumentary.) #WWDITS

1: Actual AI does not exist. Stuff like ChatGPT is just making versions based on whatever it has access to.

2: Machine Learning (which is what "AI" is currently marketed as), is a real thing with real uses.

3: Using human language is one of those things. That's what an LLM like ChatGPT is. It can use language. But it doesn't understand what it is saying. That's why people fall for it.

4: Give me examples of actually useful ML applications? Protein folding, image identification etc?

@skyglowberlin I accidentally did a similar thing with @helvick and the ISS a few years ago. My image here.

J: Want to watch a film about Dracula's seriously overworked assistant having a bit of a breakdown?

Me: He's not an assistant, he's a TECHNICIAN, and it's not funny.

J: Mwahahahah!

"The records clearly state that AI ended their civilization."

"But that's ridiculous, the technology was nowhere near AI. They only had the most basic quantum computers, they were centuries away from that kind of capability."

"Yes - a student of mine suggests they simply *thought* they had developed AI."

"So? That can't have destroyed a civilization?"

"The thesis is that it can, if people actually believed it."

"No civilization would be that daft."

#MicroSF

Be that boss. Challenge your employees in fun ways, challenge them to challenge each other in fun ways, challenge them to learn through personal projects, never be a dick.

Edit: And PAY them to learn through personal projects, if it has direct relevance to your business. At least some of it. "Oh, you bought a 3D printer and learned it in your own time, and now it's useful to my business? Can I buy you some upgrades?"
That's just investment. (Which my boss has basically done)

New part time job is intense. But in a good way. A lot being thrown at me, but by a boss who I feel understands my capability and (to an extent!) the time I have to offer. But it's fun, a lot of new skills that people are making an effort to share, so I know what they do, and just as many people curious about what I do. Nice team to work with.

(NDAs aside, I'm doing 3D design, visualisation and printing for a very specialist hand-made craft company, think casting, moulds, that kind of thing.)

Every day is a school day - especially when you're a science technician.

Had a query about a haemocytometer, dug around in the store rooms, turns out we have one. Never even heard of them, 5 years into the job.
It's basically a highly specialised microscope slide, but etched with grids on a similar scale to biological cells (originally used for red blood cells, hence the name), tricky to use but I got the hang of it in half an hour or so. Lovely bit of kit, nice skill to learn.

In my defence, I trained as a physicist with a bit of Earth sciences, but I love it when the biologists throw me curveballs. Mars will come to fear my botany powers. #MapOfACat

@freemo In the real world (but possibly a lesser film pitch), the horror would be a physicist discovering a true free energy source, and going mad trying to track down the non-existent error.

80s: The A-Team
90s: MacGyver
00s: Mythbusters
10s: The Martian

What's today's kids' reference for "locked in a room with a bunch of random stuff and a problem to solve"? Asking for a high school science technician...

Now in our third year of "this experiment never works" working beautifully, thanks to a 17yr old biologist I asked to try a bunch of different protocols, of her own choosing. All hail R MS.

(Yeast agar plates, with various antifungal creams. Trick was innoculating them *just*, as in minutes, before students used them, so the yeast never takes hold in the ideal growth conditions.)

Death: "MR JAMES EARL JONES?"

JEJ: "IS IT THAT TIME ALREADY?"

Death: "ARE YOU DOING MY VOICE?"

JEJ: "NO. PRATCHETT WROTE YOU WITH MY VOICE IN MIND."

Death: "WOW. THAT'S A FIRST."

JEJ: "AND THE ONLY TIME. IN ETERNITY. BEER?"

Death: "I THINK I NEED ONE."

James gently took his hand and led him into the desert.