4 ms·

I love the colorful play-by-play. It could almost be a kdrama. It's also kind of crazy that one of the authors did over 1000 experiments until he found LK-99,

I love the colorful play-by-play. It could almost be a kdrama. It's also kind of crazy that one of the authors did over 1000 experiments until he found LK-99, regardless of whether it checks out. Talk about a grind mindset.

techdragon 3y ago
Material science can be like that … you’re pretty sure your theory works and your results don’t wildly invalidate it, but they aren’t good enough or are missing a property or something… and it turns out you could very easily have made a bad batch, poorly aligned fibers, badly mixed epoxy, or any number of possible issues… so you try again and again to get it right… sometimes it’s for very little incremental progress in state of the art… other times it might be a Nobel prize winning superconductor.
- scarmig 3y ago
  In undergrad, I spent countless hours with a mortar and pestle, sintering, and annealing to research a particular superconductor, never getting much sleep because I had to wake up every couple hours to make sure nothing had gone awry... It tickles me that they were doing the same thing. Hoping that they get the big win here, for all of our sakes.
  - fizx 3y ago
    Yup. Also tickles me that I might have had better equipment than this team, though we still had to source sample carriers from McDonalds. The multi-million-dollar measurement apparatus required us to put samples in disposable tubes that cost about a dollar each. They turned out to have the exact same physical properties as a McDonalds straw, so once a week someone made a food run and grabbed a handful on the way out.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      For the SQUID? Now that brings back even more memories. We got ours from the dining halls.
jacquesm 3y ago
That's very much like how we eventually got working electric light. 1000's of failures and then something that really worked.

4 ms·

I love the colorful play-by-play. It could almost be a kdrama. It's also kind of crazy that one of the authors did over 1000 experiments until he found LK-99,

by scarmig 3y ago

techdragon 3y ago
Material science can be like that … you’re pretty sure your theory works and your results don’t wildly invalidate it, but they aren’t good enough or are missing a property or something… and it turns out you could very easily have made a bad batch, poorly aligned fibers, badly mixed epoxy, or any number of possible issues… so you try again and again to get it right… sometimes it’s for very little incremental progress in state of the art… other times it might be a Nobel prize winning superconductor.
- scarmig 3y ago
  In undergrad, I spent countless hours with a mortar and pestle, sintering, and annealing to research a particular superconductor, never getting much sleep because I had to wake up every couple hours to make sure nothing had gone awry... It tickles me that they were doing the same thing. Hoping that they get the big win here, for all of our sakes.
  - fizx 3y ago
    Yup. Also tickles me that I might have had better equipment than this team, though we still had to source sample carriers from McDonalds. The multi-million-dollar measurement apparatus required us to put samples in disposable tubes that cost about a dollar each. They turned out to have the exact same physical properties as a McDonalds straw, so once a week someone made a food run and grabbed a handful on the way out.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      For the SQUID? Now that brings back even more memories. We got ours from the dining halls.
jacquesm 3y ago
That's very much like how we eventually got working electric light. 1000's of failures and then something that really worked.