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This reminds me of a story going around at the chemical department here (probably it is false). Graduate student was told by prof to synthesize a substance. Pro

This reminds me of a story going around at the chemical department here (probably it is false). Graduate student was told by prof to synthesize a substance. Process is well known, but it is tedious, he would have to spend the next two month in the lab. Since this guy was resourceful he called up privately one of their chemical suppliers and ask if he can order this substance from them. They send him a quote and he ordered it. A few days later his prof comes in, and said: "can you synthesize a bit more, the company we sometimes take assignment from has a customer who also needs it"....

dtech 6y ago
If true that's very funny, but also would either mean the student is very rich or their time is sold at an abysmal wage.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Almost certainly the latter, considering grad students are paid practically slave wages.
antics 6y ago
This is true, kind of. The original source is Peter Norvig's speech to Berkeley's graduating CS students in 2006. > Before I answer that, let me return for the moment to Dewey Decimal 663: beverage technology. It turns out that in my very first professional job, as an intern thirty years ago, I had a colleague, a chemist, who had worked in beverage technology. The summer before he had been an intern and was given the task of figuring out if there was a particular chemical that gave whisky the distinctive taste of being aged in an oak cask. The company figured if they could isolate the chemical maybe they could just mix it in, and skip five or ten years of aging. So my friend went into the lab and isolated what he thought might be the right compound. He ordered a small vial from a chemical supply company (remember, this was before online shopping and email, so they had to actually write words on paper) and mixed up a batch. It tasted pretty good. (Why can't we computer scientists get research projects that involve consuming alcohol?) My friend was duly congratulated, and he wrote to the chemical supply company and asked for a 55 gallon drum of the stuff. They wrote back, saying "we regret that we can not fill your order because we are currently low on stock and, as I'm sure you know, to produce this chemical we need to age it in oak casks for five years." http://www.norvig.com/speech.html http://www.norvig.com/speech.html
- andi999 6y ago
  Thanks! Story is slightly different, and since it was told to me in 1997 there might have been a different original source.

dtech 6y ago

If true that's very funny, but also would either mean the student is very rich or their time is sold at an abysmal wage.

pmiller2 6y ago
Almost certainly the latter, considering grad students are paid practically slave wages.

antics 6y ago

This is true, kind of. The original source is Peter Norvig's speech to Berkeley's graduating CS students in 2006. > Before I answer that, let me return for the moment to Dewey Decimal 663: beverage technology. It turns out that in my very first professional job, as an intern thirty years ago, I had a colleague, a chemist, who had worked in beverage technology. The summer before he had been an intern and was given the task of figuring out if there was a particular chemical that gave whisky the distinctive taste of being aged in an oak cask. The company figured if they could isolate the chemical maybe they could just mix it in, and skip five or ten years of aging. So my friend went into the lab and isolated what he thought might be the right compound. He ordered a small vial from a chemical supply company (remember, this was before online shopping and email, so they had to actually write words on paper) and mixed up a batch. It tasted pretty good. (Why can't we computer scientists get research projects that involve consuming alcohol?) My friend was duly congratulated, and he wrote to the chemical supply company and asked for a 55 gallon drum of the stuff. They wrote back, saying "we regret that we can not fill your order because we are currently low on stock and, as I'm sure you know, to produce this chemical we need to age it in oak casks for five years." http://www.norvig.com/speech.html http://www.norvig.com/speech.html

andi999 6y ago
Thanks! Story is slightly different, and since it was told to me in 1997 there might have been a different original source.