Then HEY! for a life of washing-up
So I have been admitted into the sacred interior of the Davies Lab as an acolyte. For the past week I have been shown the various rites and rituals that are the acolyte's lot - Washing Up, every day, that the god of glassware not leave us bereft. Evacuation, and Flushing With Nitrogen, thrice, that the Oxygen Devil not undo our holy work. Collection of Glassware from the furnace of purification, and the assembly of diverse sacred works.
The Glove Box is far too great a shrine for human hands to touch. We sully it with our very presence, our mere breath, and so all devotions done therein must undergo the Ritual of Evacuation and Nitrogen, thrice, in the side-chapel. While one waits for the vacuum gauge to reach the bottom, indicating that all traces of Oxygen, The Destroyer, have been removed, one meditates upon the bounty of the Department so that when the offerings are finally purged clear of contagion and are ready to be admitted into the interior of the shrine, one is in a sufficiently devout state of mind to use the Great Gloves without damage.
Today, I was honoured. I was permitted to go, alone, to the deep vaults of the Inter-faculty NMR Facility.
In that great room to which all mere mortals are admitted only on sufferance, lines of black and yellow mark on the floor the places we may tread without the wrath of Electromagnet reaching out to strike us down. I stayed well back, less the abundance of metal in my person offend the mighty Field. O you foolish men that declare niobium to be a non-magnetic metal! The powers at work within that room cannot be so easily dismissed.
A sign was given to me: 400B, 15. The words of NMR cannot be heard by mortal ears. I came humble indeed to the Translators, approaching them with the correct offerings and pass-signs, and was not destroyed. On Monday shall I offer a prayer that NMR may have seen fit to grant me a holy riddle to decode, that I may know whether I made a Gilman reagent, or whether I fucked up again.
The Glove Box is far too great a shrine for human hands to touch. We sully it with our very presence, our mere breath, and so all devotions done therein must undergo the Ritual of Evacuation and Nitrogen, thrice, in the side-chapel. While one waits for the vacuum gauge to reach the bottom, indicating that all traces of Oxygen, The Destroyer, have been removed, one meditates upon the bounty of the Department so that when the offerings are finally purged clear of contagion and are ready to be admitted into the interior of the shrine, one is in a sufficiently devout state of mind to use the Great Gloves without damage.
Today, I was honoured. I was permitted to go, alone, to the deep vaults of the Inter-faculty NMR Facility.
In that great room to which all mere mortals are admitted only on sufferance, lines of black and yellow mark on the floor the places we may tread without the wrath of Electromagnet reaching out to strike us down. I stayed well back, less the abundance of metal in my person offend the mighty Field. O you foolish men that declare niobium to be a non-magnetic metal! The powers at work within that room cannot be so easily dismissed.
A sign was given to me: 400B, 15. The words of NMR cannot be heard by mortal ears. I came humble indeed to the Translators, approaching them with the correct offerings and pass-signs, and was not destroyed. On Monday shall I offer a prayer that NMR may have seen fit to grant me a holy riddle to decode, that I may know whether I made a Gilman reagent, or whether I fucked up again.