Skip to main content

< 20 mK

I've finally gotten the dilution fridge to run, and I'm pretty happy with the results so far. Although I don't have a definitive way to prove that the system base temperature is 5 mK, I'm pretty sure I can hit < 10 mK. The most conservative statement is that temperatures below 20 mK have been attained.

So lab work has been keeping me busy for most of the last few days, though I did take opportunities during meals to hang out. I went to a delicious restaurant, the Piedmont, in Durham downtown to help celebrate a friend's birthday. The food is essentially French, and for the second course I ordered ratatouille. This is largely because I watched the animated story Ratatouille a few weeks ago, which was an entertaining and delightful movie. I truly believe in the message, "Anyone can cook," which can be shortened, or rather generalized, to "Anyone can." Perhaps some day we may look forward to mice cooking for us? Perhaps they already do, though this is a slightly unsavory thought.

But the ratatouille at the Piedmont was anything but disgusting. It was wonderful. It's a vegetable dish with eggplant, tomato, onions, peppers and zucchini, typically fried or baked. Piedmont's version consisted of baked vegetables on risotto rice, in a tomatoey red sauce, which is not too soupy and not too thick. Yum!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbyes

It's hard saying goodbye. A good friend of mine is leaving Duke to return to Paris. He was fed up with the physics program here, and after securing a position in France, decided to return home. It's unfortunate that the department here could not do more to help, as he was genuinely bright; unfortunately he was suffering from depression, probably induced by the stresses of the PhD program as well as the dull boring city of Durham. In general how does one say goodbye? You don't really, especially if you're good friends. You just end up saying hello less often. At least that's my take. Unfortunately, more on goodbyes, it's goodbye to Duke's NCAA hopes for this year. We were outplayed by LSU. Sure the refs were really not entirely fair (from our point of view of course), but they closed our top scorer down. It was a fun run, and I enjoyed watching them play, especially since I thought they played such great team basketball, but it's over. Such a somber posti...
Post a Comment
Read more

FAO Schwarz!

Found this on Funny Times: What New Toys Did You Get? (compiled by Phil Proctor) Capitalism: He who dies with the most toys, wins. Hari Krishna: He who plays with the most toys, wins. Judaism: He who buys toys at the lowest price, wins. Catholicism: He who denis himself the most toys, wins. Anglican: They were our toys first. Greek Orthodox: No, they were ours first. Branch Davidians: He who dies playing with the biggest toys, wins. Atheism: There is no toy maker. Polytheism: There are many toy makers. Evolutionism: The toys made themselves. Church of Christ, Scientist: We are the toys. Communism: Everyone gets the same number of toys, and you go straight to the opposite of heaven if we catch you selling yours. B'Hai: All toys are just fine with us. Amish: Toys with batteries are surely a sin. Buddhism: Wanting toys causes suffering. They either break, or you outgrow them. Taoism: The doll is as important as the dump truck. Mormonism: Every boy may have as many toys as he wants. Vo...
Post a Comment
Read more