An 8 shot panorama image of the Arthur Ravenel Bridge that I took this afternoon from the SC Aquarium.
I also put together a 5 shot panorama of the USS Yorktown from the same location
Museum: Collimator core
An essential component of any gamma camera is the collimator. Essentially a hunk of lead with a bunch of tiny little holes in it (modern collimators are made from ridged sheets of lead bonded together to form hexagonal holes like this one).
The purpose of the collimator is to restrict the direction from which gamma rays are detected by the gamma camera. They operate like blinders and make it so that the gamma camera can only see gamma rays coming from a particular direction (usually straight ahead perpendicular to the face of the camera). Collimators are necessary because by itself, the gamma camera has no idea what direction a detected gamma ray came from. By limiting the direction gamma rays are detected from, a useful image can be created by the computer.
This image I took by placing the collimator up against the front of my camera lens and a wide open aperature (f3.2). You can see just how limited the field of view becomes with the collimator.
HP 28S: 21 years of calculating and still going
I was crunching some numbers with my calculator when it suddenly dawned on me that I’ve been using this calculator for 21 years now. 21 years! I know people who weren’t even born when I bought it!
My HP 28S, purchased sometime around 1988 when I was just a lowly undergrad student in my first year of school (could have been 1989, which would make it only 20 years old and me in my second year of school) .
I think it was actually the first purchase I ever made with my very first credit card. I remember one of my engineer friends had one, and after playing with his for a bit, I decided I needed one too. It turned out to be probably the best $280Cdn that I ended up spending during my school years.
These days it doesn’t get used nearly as much as it used to and the calculations it does get used for aren’t nearly as complex. It’s still pretty reliable though and does everything I ask it to.
HP 28S circa 1988 serial number 2933A03136. I even have the manuals for it too.
No, you can’t have it.
120GB in the palm of your hand
The new hard drive. It still amazes me that something this small can hold as much as it does, and it’s not even the largest capacity drive available. Quarter presented for size comparison.
Impact
