Big Kid Legos

I am a spectroscopist, and this is my laser. It’s enormous, it’s fiendishly complicated, and it takes an enormous amount of time to keep it cooperative. Nonetheless, I can learn about the basic motions of molecules with it.
The farther along I get, the more I realize that the system basically amounts to Legos for big kids.

Big Kid Legos

Oscilloscope

My lab is packed with control boxes and oscilloscopes and all manner of signal processing equipment; strung between them all, like the web of a spider on caffeine, is a truly epic array of cables and wires connecting and powering the whole rig. On an average day, when nothing is (seriously) broken, I tend to forget about the mess of electronics, but it’s worth the attention (every now and then) to stop and really appreciate the ordered chaos that facilitates ultrafast spectroscopy.

Oscilloscope