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A 22-year old full time student can't even afford "dirt cheap" second hand equipment (nevermind the space to store it!) unless: -They have some sort of windfal
by astura 5y ago
A 22-year old full time student can't even afford "dirt cheap" second hand equipment (nevermind the space to store it!) unless:
-They have some sort of windfall
-They have a trust fund or stipend that they receive just for existing
-Their parents pay for everything, or, alternatively, their parents pay for all of their living expenses so their own money is only "fun money."
-They, somehow, have a high paying job. In which case they probably won't be going to school full time also. Or they're "job" is having a lot of followers on social media.
This isn't a knock on anyone, I'm just trying to explain why one young adult student can be excited because they were finally able to save up for a soldering iron and another has a garage full of expensive experiment to tinker with.
It's pretty much implied this guy's living expenses (or most of them) are covered by his parents who also have tons of extra space and tolerance for him using it.
- l-lousy 5y agoWell he’s (Sam) very likely still living at home, so parents are paying for most things. Plus he has the revenue from YouTube
- temp8964 5y agoI am not sure about his case, but it's not very hard for a talent student to get $1k scholarship every month. That's lot of money to use if he does not need to pay for his living expenses.
- rdtwo 5y agoYeah I mean so what. College room and board is 30-50k I’m sure he can get the microscope running for less than that
- was_a_dev 5y agoMy PhD is funded by a research council and my stipend is £12k. After rent, food and bills there is some room. But it's laughable to think I could repair and run an electron microscope. Already mentioned, finding a broken microscope for £1k wouldn't happen here. And you're seriously underestimating the resource requirements to operate such a machine
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoSo find some professor at a university with an electron microscope and convince them to let you borrow it some times.
- rdtwo 5y agoI think those days are over. Universitys are super corporate now they want to own everything you touch
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoOk then think of another cool project that doesn't require an electron microscope.
- was_a_dev 5y agoThat kinda defeats the whole point at that stage?
- rdtwo 5y agoIf my public middle school could do that in some back room closet it can’t be that bad. For reference in us costs and spend your public stipend is less than my city spends per person on homeless folks and half of minimum wage. I think we’re taking different scales of money. These kinds of projects are open to the top 5-10% of earners in the us so 15million or so folks could fund this but only 1-2 actually do it.
- was_a_dev 5y agoThe whole point of my comments were the price scales are out of touch of most people. Not to detract from the achivement. But there's some respect to how the challenges were overcome by the large budget A 22 year old in the top 5% of earns is a very lucky man