Science is easy

I've been a bit quiet again, not because there's anything catastrophically bad, or ecstatically good happening in the World of Bears, but rather because my mind has largely been frothing and ranting to itself about the stupidity of my customers who refuse to engage their brains. What I've been wanting to do is illustrate the utter idiocy with which I'm faced in a way that other people will understand, and yet I know that if I simply repeated, verbatim, what the customer has asked for, I'm not sure I'd get very far. I probably have two or three friends who would laugh immediately. And everyone else would look blankly at me, as though I were a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And then I thought, "hold on a minute PhysicsBear, you took an entire course in science communication at University, and you keep banging on about how anybody can understand science, this should be something you can explain."

So here goes....

I'm going to start with the easy stuff. The stuff that you know without evening knowing that you know it. Because there's a lot of science just hanging around, minding its own business, not causing any trouble, that you do know really. For instance - the boiling point of water* is 100 degrees Celsius. See, that's not so hard is it?

Now we'll move on to the next one. Humidity. There's water vapour in the air all the time. Water vapour is the gaseous form of water. Just like ice is the solid form of water. If there's water vapour in the air, that gives it what we normally call humidity. For instance, it's a damp day here in the fens, and the relative humidity** is 94%.

We've made a pretty good start already, and to get to the heart of what I'm going to explain, all we need to do is look hard at those two facts and think about their consequences.

1. The boiling point of water is 100°C

2. At 8°C there is 7.8g/m³ of gaseous water in the air**.

Can you see where I'm going yet? I'll help out. A substance does not need to be above its boiling point for some part of it to be in its gas phase, The air around you is definitely not above 100°C, and yet there is just as definitely gaseous water in that air. Admittedly, the higher the temperature, the more water there will be in gaseous form - if we had 94% humidity on a day where it happened to be 24°C instead of 8°C, then there'd be more like 20g/m³ of water vapour in the air, but the point remains - a substance doesn't have to be above its boiling point to be a gas. However, the closer to boiling point it gets, the more of it will be a gas.

Step one of today's lesson is now complete.

Step two is marginally less likely to be part of your everyday experience, but it might still be something you know, as it relies on one of those factoids that occasionally get batted around: if you try and boil and egg at the top of Everest, you will find it takes longer, because water at the top of Everest boils at approximately 70°C. And why is that? Is it because it's terribly excited to have climbed a big mountain? No. Is it because it's closer to the sun? No. Is it because gravity is trying to persuade it back down the mountain again, so it's in a hurry? No. It's because the air pressure is lower. The boiling point of water decreases with decreasing pressure. In fact, the boiling point of any liquid decreases with decreasing pressure.

Now, we can have a go at adding step one and step two together. It's getting pretty exciting isn't it?

Step 1 told us that a liquid doesn't have to be above boiling point for some portion of it to have turned to a gas and that the closer to a liquid's boiling point you get, the more of it will be in the gas phase.

Step 2 told us that a liquid's boiling point decreases at decreasing pressure.

So now we could take a wild deductive leap, and notice that as we lower the pressure, for any liquid, we'll lower the boiling point, and more and more of that liquid will move into the gas phase. We can take this to quite absurd levels. Sticking with water, if we drop the pressure to only 1% of atmospheric pressure, then water will boil at approximately 7°C. Drop it to 0.1% of atmospheric pressure and the boiling point has plunged to a distinctly chilly -24°C. And to be really silly, we'll drop the pressure to where the ion source of my mass spectrometer operates, which is 0.00001% of atmospheric pressure, at which point water boils at -101°C.

Given your, now enormous, wealth of knowledge about temperature, pressure, boiling point and liquids-turning-to-gases, I have no doubt that you've immediately spotted that a really vast amount of water will have turned to a gas at room temperature once its boiling point is a paltry -101°C.

So now I can tell you what my idiot customer has said.

He wishes to analyse a compound with a boiling point of 350°C. He has told us he wishes to heat our ion source to 350°C to make sure his compound remains as a gas.

Tell me, dear friends, do we really think that at 0.00001% of atmospheric pressure the boiling point of his compound is still 350°C? Do we even think that his compound needs to be above its boiling point for some of it to be a gas? Do we already, in a few short paragraphs, have a better grasp of the thermodynamics of gases than this alleged "expert"? And we haven't even started on the fact that some significant parts of my beautiful scientific instrument will melt at 350°C, thus rendering it utterly incapable of analysing anything at all, no matter what its boiling point. Do we now cease wondering why PhysicsBear could be found literally banging her head on her desk in frustration when she received another email from this muppet last week?



* For the pedants among you, and for the sake of future paragraphs, this is the boiling point of pure water at standard atmospheric pressure.

** Relative humidity is a technical term and in this case it means that the air is holding 94% of the maximum amount of water vapour that it can hold at the current temperature. That actually works out to be that there is about 7.8g of gaseous water in every cubic metre of air here at the moment.

Welcome to your new Mass Spectrometer

I have been writing some new documentation recently at work, in an attempt to render the new instrument I've been working on usable by someone other than me. When I say "new" documentation, obviously what I mean is "cobbled together from things I've written before", because only an idiot would start from scratch if they didn't have to. Or so I thought. It's always worked before. But I was always in control of the documentation before. And last year, because I was over-worked, I lost control. I am no longer the sole author.

Imagine for a moment that you have bought yourself a lovely, new mass spectrometer. You are a young, keen, environmental scientist, looking forward to collecting data and identifying patterns in atmospheric pollution. English is probably not your first language. In fact, the roman alphabet may not even be the writing system of your native language. You're really hoping that the documentation that comes with your £150,000 instrument is going to be clear enough that you'll be able to start using your new toy almost straight away. You aren't an engineer or physicist. In fact, you don't really know how this particular technique works, but you do understand the data that comes out of it, and it's the data that you're interested in.

You've fully immersed yourself in this imaginary scenario haven't you? Good. Now you can open the user manual. What's this? There are four manuals? Why are there four manuals? What are they for? This one says it's a "Hardware Reference", and seems to be full of impenetrable jargon, so you put it to one side, as it clearly has nothing in it that will tell you how to use your new machine. "User Guide", that looks more promising. Except its introductory statement tells you that you need to read and understand the "Hardware Reference" first, and that you have to read the other two manuals. What are they? They both seem to be software manuals, how odd. One of them is the software for controlling the machine, and the other for collecting the data. Surely that's the same thing?

It's at this point that I'll let you in on a secret. For historical reasons, we have two utterly separate software suites, one that controls the machine's voltages, temperatures, pressures and flows; the other suite is all about data collection, processing and analysis. They're written in different programming languages.

But you, the naive, young, non-English environmental chemist, really don't care what language any of it was originally written in, and nor do you want to have to jump back and forth between different manuals as you try and work out how to get some data. Shaking your head at the crazy people who have written this documentation, you resign yourself to reading one of the software manuals, and since you need to try and turn the machine on, you start with the software guide for operating the machine. And you are confronted with this as the very first line in the user guide:

Now that the source and optics are almost completely computer controlled, many front panel controls have disappeared, to be replaced by controls in screen dialogs. These have been added to the existing monitoring program, which now takes on both tasks.  

I think you would be justified in being, as a bare minimum, bemused by this, and at worst perhaps panic-struck to hear that controls have been disappearing. I genuinely cannot imagine what was passing through my colleague's mind when he decided that this was a suitable introductory sentence for a user guide. It makes perfect sense to me, to remind me what's changed since the version of this machine we built a couple of years ago, but not to someone who neither knows, nor cares, about the design of an instrument they don't own and will never use.

Overcoming your concerns about the sanity of the author, and the wisdom of having bought some very expensive equipment from a company in the grip of utter lunacy, you plough on, hoping to understand what's going on. You soon find yourself reading how to use the control system...

Many of the adjustable parameters require a high dynamic range in adjustment, meaning that the range of adjustment is very large compared with the smallest adjustable increment. In systems with manual controls, these adjustments would often have been made with a 10 turn dial potentiometer. Unfortunately, there are no standard Windows controls that are suitable and convenient for the task, so it has been necessary to invent a new control.  

Because a user guide is always the place to justify the author's hatred of Microsoft. You, my poor, naive, enthusiastic chemist, don't care why the control system has been designed the way it has. You don't need to know the pain we suffered when using another manufacturer's appalling control system, designed to overcome this same problem. You only need to know that what you have is simple, robust, intuitive and clear. You only need to know that you can easily and comfortably adjust 3,500V by one volt at a time with mouse or keyboard without specialist knowledge or training, and without needing the eyes of a hawk and the dexterity of a concert pianist.

So, back to the "new" documentation I'm writing. Which is now destined to actually be new, because I cannot, in good conscience, and with any sense of professional pride, have those sentences, or many of their friends and relations, in my documentation. And I'm going to take the radical step of putting all the information about how to use the instrument into a User Guide, and all the other, detailed, technical stuff into a Service Manual. Which has taken what was a fairly sizeable job and turned it into a behemoth. And I have to try and get it done quickly enough that nobody will notice the complete restructuring that I am undertaking and tell me not to "waste" time on it. And I have to get it done well enough that everyone will agree that my way is the best way, and not defend the Four Manuals of Bewilderment. Sometimes I think taking a pride in my job will be the death of me.

Acute vexation

Today has been One Of Those Days at work. In fact, this week is shaping up to be One Of Those Weeks.

I have been contacted again by Mr Turnip and the Purchasing Department. While this should be the name of a slightly twee indie rock band, sadly it's actually the stuff of nightmares. Literally. I had nightmares about it last night.

It's nearly a year since Mr Turnip insist that I bend to his will and I refused. And it turns out, rather as I expected, there is no-one else in the world who can or will build a bespoke scientific instrument to his specifications, so a year later and his Purchasing Department have put the instrument out to tender. Again.

So, here we go again....

Except, since we last put a bid in, the delightful bureaucrats at the other end have "improved" the tendering system, and we no longer have to submit paper copies, in triplicate, in sealed, colour-coded envelopes, with every page signed, counter-signed and stamped. Now, they have an e-Tender website. Imagine, if you can, the kind of website that will be designed by people who like having paper copies in triplicate, in sealed, colour-coded envelopes, with every page signed, counter-signed and stamped. Now stop imagining that, if you can, because it will only give you a headache.

For reasons that are too vexatious, and might lead to me committing a sackable offence if I were attempt to give voice to them, I am attempting to submit this bid. But I'm very busy - attempting to get 4 instruments tested, 2 instruments built and another one designed. All by last January. So, I asked Minion Who Lacks Gumption to explore the website, read the documentation, find the bid details and instructions and report back to me on what I need to do. I asked him to do this 10 days ago and have seen him studying the website most days when I've walked past his desk. Foolishly I thought that this meant he would have made sterling progress. Such naivete.

Yesterday, I sat down with him to enquire whether he had worked out what the tendering process actually is.

PhysicsBear: what do I have to do?

Minion Who Lacks Gumtion: Ummm

PB: Do I upload a pdf? Or do I have to copy and paste into a web form?

MWLG: Ummm. 

PB: ?

MWLG: I think you type things in. There's a spreadsheet.

PB: Really? It's just that last time we had nine pages of descriptions and photographs and diagrams, so it's hard to see how I can type that in.

MWLG: It said something about blue ink.

PB: How do I use blue ink on a website?

MWLG: I don't know.

PB: So?

MWLG: There's a briefcase.

PB: What's that?

MWLG: Ummm.

PB: Yes?

MWLG: I think you put things there?

PB: How?

MWLG: I don't know. Whenever I try and look I get an error message.

PB: What message?

MWLG: Ummm.

PB: Can you show me?

MWLG: Ummm.

After a bit more poking and prodding we sit and look at the website together. And, lo and behold, there is indeed an error message. MWLG has registered the company on the website, but the registration is incomplete, and without completing the registration, access to the bidding section is restricted. The website clearly states, in big, red letters, "You do not have a Digital Certificate. Please obtain a Digital Certificate before attempting to continue."

PB: What's the Digital Certificate?

MWLG: Ummm

PB: Well, there's a menu called "Digital Certificate" at the top there. We should look at that.

And yea, verily, there were documents entitled "Important Points for applying" and "Application Procedure" and even an actual application form. At this point, somewhat exasperated, I retreated to my own desk to read what were obviously quite important pieces of information that MWLG had failed to find, or read, or tell me about. And it was in the following twenty minutes that everything unravelled before my eyes.

I learnt a new word. It wasn't a swear word, though I may use it as such. Though perhaps it's too pretty for that. It is "apostille". Try it, it's rather nice: apostille, apostille, apostille. My lawyer friends may be nodding ruefully at this point. Those of you who don't know the meaning of "apostille" - I envy you. I wish I too was still in a state of blissful ignorance. I wish I too did not know anything about the Hague Convention. I wish I could just footle around with my protons and electrons and not have to fall into the chasm of bureaucracy that has opened beneath my feet.

Let me explain. I'll try to be brief.

To apostille a document is to certify that it is legal under the Hague Convention. Which sounds quite benign.

The requirements in this case are that I take a signed passport photograph, my passport, the company seal, a legal document demonstrating I am authorised to act on behalf of the company, the company's certificate of incorporation, the articles and memorandum of association, the first and second pages of a company bank statement, the last audit report, and the last annual financial return to a Public Notary. The Public Notary duly notarizes copies of these documents as being true and valid etc etc. Then I have to send these notarized documents to the Legalisation Office of the UK Government to be apostilled. Which appears to mean that they are notarized to prove that the government agrees that the notary who did the original notarizing is indeed authorized to notarize. With me so far?

Obviously, I have to pay for all these services. And they take time. I could get the apostilling done on a next day basis, if I went to London myself.

And then (and here's the kicker), I have to send the apostilled, notarized documents... to Mumbai. Where they will take a minimum of 7 days to process them. At the end of which process, they will issue me with a 2048-bit RSA key digital signature certificate. Though I may also have to provide biometric data. To Mumbai. No, I don't know how they expect me to do that.

And this utterly extraordinary level of security and complexity will essentially be to give me a password to a website so I can (possibly) upload a pdf offering our services to supply a mass spectrometer. And I thought internet banking was a bit of a faff.

We have 30 days in which to submit this bid. We would have had 40 days if MWLG had actually discovered the need for a digital signature in the ten days he had to look at the website.

I've decided not to bother.

I've written to our agent in India and said "No". He can deal with it, that's what he takes a cut for. He can actually be an agent for a change and apply on our behalf. And if that doesn't work, Mr Turnip will have to make his own mass spectrometer, because I give up.

Up and Down and All Around

Somewhere in here there's probably a Mini Positive Post. Somewhere in here there's certainly a Major Negative Post. There's also scope for a Rant. I've spent several days explaining, in my head, what exactly has irked and upset me so massively that I left work early on Friday and came home and wept for an hour. And it just all gets too complicated, and too technical, and requires too much of a long and rambling explanation of the curious personality-types I work with, and too much knowledge of 18 years of back-history of working where I work.

So, instead of trying to explain why I feel the way I do, I'm just going to say how I feel. No explanations, no justifications, no he-said-she-said, no rights or wrongs. Just feelings.

I feel disregarded, unappreciated and ignored. I feel as though my job title (R&D Manager) is simply a sop to keep me quiet, and has no real meaning or relevance. I feel as though my contribution, during working hours and in my own free time, is under-valued, even taken for granted. I feel as though the amount I'm paid for what I do doesn't compensate for the level of emotional and psychological commitment I make, or the stress I feel. I feel physically and emotionally exhausted from trying to do two full time jobs in one set of part-time hours. I feel like giving up on a project on which I've simply hit a brick wall, with no support, understanding or ideas from my colleagues. I feel patronised. I feel marginalised. I feel as though I'm being treated with contempt.

But I also feel, perhaps because of all of the above, as though I'm not good enough. I feel as though I don't, and can't, and never will, measure up. I feel as though I dare not speak up, to defend myself, or my ideas, because I'm probably wrong; I'm probably too stupid to have understood some subtlety or other that my colleagues have already identified. I feel as though I have to keep trying, keep banging my head against the same brick wall, because if I don't and someone else takes over, they might solve the problems that are stumping me, and might reveal my inadequacy and stupidity.

I feel isolated.

I feel trapped, because I don't feel competent enough, or clever enough, or brave enough to look for another job. I feel trapped because I have the world's best working hours for a mother of a young child, and a flexible environment for fulfilling those hours, and I'd never find anything quite as easy to fit around school. I feel trapped because though on paper I can make myself look and sound good, I feel inadequate. I feel like a fraud. I feel as though I'm only masquerading as a physicist and am getting away with it for now, but it wouldn't pass muster in the "real" world.

I feel as though I should speak up, should say, "enough", should explain that I cannot function this way any longer. But I fear for the repurcussions. I fear being told that I'm not good enough. I fear being told that I'm not worthwhile, that I'm not needed, that my opinions are not valuable. It's hard not to feel that way when the last time we attempted to recruit someone, one of the major criteria was that, "they need to be better than you, PhysicsBear".

I spent Friday afternoon weeping.

I spent Friday night lying awake imagining resigning.

I spent Saturday evening weeping.

I don't want to go to work in the morning.

I don't want to carry on as though none of my feelings exist, but I don't want to attempt to articulate any of them when I'm simply liable to start crying if I do so.

I bet you're beginning to wonder where the positive part of this post happens aren't you?

I'll replay those last few events in a less selective manner...

I left work early and spent Friday afternoon weeping.

While at home, I received the following text messages from my colleagues, referring to two separate incidents:

"<boss> asked where you were. I said nothing. I have thought about telling him. But the risk there is that he apologises and then your venom will be undermined and you would be obliged to forgive him"

 "Hi PhysicsBear. I'm guessing you feel pretty sore after this morning's episode with <boss> . Try not to let it get to you. Thank you for coming to help me and I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire. The rest of us really do respect your skill and experience (if that helps at all)"

I spent Friday evening drinking wine and eating cheese with some of my friends, and we set the world to rights. We giggled, we bitched and we shared embarrassing stories.

I spent Saturday afternoon making paper snakes for SnakeWorld with LittleBear, and solving a Rubik's cube every time he messed it up.*

I spent Saturday evening weeping on my mother's shoulder, while she reassured me I was splendid.

I spent Sunday morning playing with LittleBear, and he made me a "certificate" that reads, "Thank you for being a great parent". (And I shall omit the fact that I'm 99% certain he did so to make up for yelling "I hate you!" at me in a fit of pique when I said we had to stop playing football...)

I spent Sunday lunchtime drinking and talking and laughing with old friends. Some of whom I first met when I was 4.

I am blessed with a lovely family, good friends both old and new, and the best LittleBear in the world. I'm going to go to bed and try thinking about those things, and not about going to work.



* I followed instructions on the t'interweb, I'm not a Rubik's maestro. See, I told you I was a fraud...

Work-life imbalance

I'm actually so tired and fed-up I almost don't have the energy to rant. So this isn't going to be a carefully crafted post, in which I labour over the perfect phrasing of every paragraph (which obviously I do on every other post, can't you tell?) No, this time, the words are simply going to spill out, as my hands rattle across the keyboard, trying to allow my thoughts to form coherence of their own accord as they materialise. It's perhaps not the best strategy, but it's the only one I've got.

I admit, I have a pretty good arrangement with my employers. They are understanding and flexible; they have accommodated maternity leave and a part-time return to work without caviling. I know I'm lucky. But that doesn't actually mean that every aspect of my working life is golden.

Take the current situation, for example.

For the last eighteen months, we've been short-handed. There appears to be no drive to change this situation. We've only just managed to replace the Problem Employee (who was himself a replacement for the Departed Employee). So for 18 months I've had an assistant/employee who was either new and/or useless. The current New Person is turning out to be awesome, but he's still new, and still needs a lot of training, and that takes time, and effort. And it means there are a lot of jobs that I'm still doing, 18 months after Departed Employee departed, on top of all my own jobs. And some of those jobs are going considerably slower than normal as I'm training New Person to do them. In the long run this will be a Good Thing. Just now, it's an extra loading on my time, and mental energy.

Meanwhile, over the previous umpty-tump years, we've generally built half a dozen large, bespoke scientific instruments per year. This gives us time to design, build, test, commission, document and ship each one. It also gives us time to find mistakes in the designs and modify them so that next time we build one, it's better than last time. But all that has changed in the last 18 months as well. Our entire business model has changed, and we are currently, simultaneously building thirteen instruments of three different designs (6 of one, 5 of another and 2 of another). And we have simply not adjusted, individually or as an organisation to doing this.

We don't have the man-power to build this much stuff in one go.

We don't have the space to assemble this much stuff in one go.

We don't have the brain capacity to remember every detail of every instrument as we go.

We don't have the systems in place to avoid screwing everything up horribly when we build multiple large instruments in one go.

The set of five identical instruments is my baby. I've nurtured this project, and its predecessors, for the past decade. I've sweated blood and wept bitter tears over this design. The first of these five instruments was due to be sent to the customer in December, with the subsequent four following on at monthly intervals. Not only have I missed the first deadline, I've missed the following four deadlines as well. I have five eviscerated, non-functioning scientific instruments scattered around my lab, and I cannot manage to engage the interest of anybody else in the company in helping complete them. Their attention is elsewhere - on the next thing, the next problem, the next customer, the next crisis. In fact, the only person who seems to care is the Finance Director, who comes and hovers beside me once a week to ask why I haven't finished yet. Which helps.

When I attempt to gain the attention of my Managing Director, he tells me that the next two projects are now more important. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we're already most of the way through building both six giant instruments, and their two smaller brothers (sisters?) I haven't actually finished my part of the design. So, when I'm not beating my head against the brick wall of five non-functioning machines, I'm fighting a desperate rear-guard action, and trying to design electronic control systems more than three days ahead of when our electronics team will build them. Today I ran downstairs to tell them to stop building the set of ten circuit boards they were working on, as I'd realised I'd missed a vital component off.

On top of all this, I'm also (still) trying to deal with a man with a turnip who won't place an order with us, but wants me to promise that his turnip will do what he wants.

Have I mentioned I technically only work 22.5 hours per week?

Have I mentioned that my current workload is enough to fill that time more than twice over?

Have I mentioned that I've worked here for nearly 19 years, and I have an over-developed sense of responsibility?

Which is how I've found myself working until 10pm four evenings this week.

Which is how I found myself driving home from Homebase and Dunelm Mill and other Exciting Places this afternoon on the verge of tears, for no reason other than utter exhaustion. And frustration. And loss of morale. And a growing sense of being hung out to dry professionally. And feeling undervalued and unappreciated. And having no end in sight. So not exactly "no reason".

So, while I might be completely aware of the positives of where I work, there are days when I'm not entirely sure they compensate for the negatives.

A weight swapped

My rash optimism yesterday that being liberated from Problem Employee would be a weight lifted from my mind was just that. Rash optimism. Unlike my colleagues, who tell me that they slept well and easily for the first time in months, I did not. I lay awake for a couple of hours after going to bed, and then woke early this morning. I feel unrested, unrelaxed and unrelieved.

Why?

Partly I feel terribly guilty. I have been instrumental in a man losing his job. Admittedly, he was ill-suited to the job, not fulfilling the requirements and making life very trying for everyone around him, but nonetheless, he's a man with a life and hopes and responsibilities who no longer has a job. What's more, I was one of the people who interviewed him for the post, and recommended that we appoint him. So I feel responsible for the fact that we chose poorly when recruiting.

Partly I feel like I have failed, that it is me that is not good enough. In the past 6 years, we've employed three new people to perform some of my job functions. Each time I've been involved in the recruiting. The first didn't last beyond his six month's probation. Despite a PhD in Physics from Cambridge University, part of which spent undertaking research at CERN, he quite frankly wasn't up to much. He didn't learn what we tried to teach him, he was arrogant, and he was unhelpful. So he left. The third (most recent) didn't last beyond his first year. Despite many years experience in electronics and engineering, he didn't learn what we tried to teach him, was arrogant and was unhelpful. Only the second was any use, and he's now moved on to a better job. (Hey M! Any chance you want to come back?)

Having read that, you're probably wondering why I feel as though I've failed. We've had two people who weren't good enough, or weren't what we wanted, and one who was just right. What's that got to do with me? Well, the common theme is that I was the one responsible for training and attempting to manage employees number 1 and 3. Employee number 2 was initially my maternity cover, so by definition his first year with us was spent in my absence.

So, what if it's me? What if it's that I'm simply totally crap at teaching people how to do what we need them to do? M did a great job when it wasn't me teaching him or managing him. The two men I was in charge of failed singularly. To fail to teach and manage one qualified candidate may be regarded as a misfortune; to fail to teach both looks like carelessness.

With these thoughts swirling in my mind, I lay awake last night, running over how exactly I do explain things. Testing my own understanding of the basics of ion optics and vacuum physics in pretend conversations. Teaching an invisible, imaginary person all about what I do. And I still don't know if I can do it. Maybe I'm like the teacher in Peanuts, and all my students hear is "Wah wah wah wah". And even if I do mange to convey the odd pearl of wisdom, I certainly know less than the square root of bugger all about managing people*.

And now, I have to start all over again, advertising, filtering, interviewing, employing and training employee number 4. And I might just go through the whole process again and find another promising candidate who doesn't learn, won't listen and makes life difficult. And it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that it really is me at that point. That recalcitrance, obtuseness, stupidity and arrogance is all in the eye of the beholder, and that I am busy beholding traits that are not inherent in my poor, hapless employees, but are reactions to my failings. Perhaps I am the nightmare manager from hell from whom employees retreat. The one they go home and rant and weep about. The one who is unfair, and unjust and unreasonable.

Perhaps that is me.

And clearly, the only way to know if that is me that others experience is to lie awake at night worrying. Because a lack of sleep always makes things look better in the morning.


* This doesn't actually set me aside from many members of my company. Unlike them, I actually care about this deficiency though.  

A weight lifted

Among the many reasons* I haven't been blogging as frequently in the past few months as I have done before is that there's been A Thing. And The Thing has been Bothering Me. Once there's A Thing, my mind is more or less incapable of doing anything other than stewing on The Thing. And if I can't write about The Thing, I find it nigh on possible to write about anything else. And until today, I haven't been able to write about The Thing.

But now... The Thing is gone!

The Thing, in this case, being a Problem Employee. And today, his contract of employment was terminated. Despite my usual tendency to rant, swear, profane and otherwise let off steam, I felt professionally obliged not to write anything about this situation somewhere that is essentially totally public. And, actually, I still feel the same. Despite my frustrations, Problem Employee is a person with feelings and rights, and I don't think it's fair to write anything here about him.

So I shall draw a discrete veil across the matter and let you know only that my life is now, I hope, going to be considerably less stressful in one major respect. The fact that we've now got one less employee, and a chunk of his workload is going to revert to me is a totally different issue and one that I'm currently ignoring.

Last week I undertook a "work to rule" experiment, and refused to bring any work home with me. I ended up a much happier bear than I've been for several months, which was a salutary lesson. I didn't make very much progress on my design projects though...

So, I can foresee some quite serious conflicts between, on the one hand, my work ethic, my desire to go a good job, and my sense that I am partially responsible for the success and failure of the current projects and, on the other hand, my need to look after myself, my health, and my relationships with friends and family. I'm not sure there is a work-life balance that will see both demands satisfied, but I am going to try very hard to remember that nobody ever reaches the end of their lives and wishes they'd spent more time at work...


* Most of those reasons are work. If I am sat in front of a computer, I am working. If I turn my laptop on at home, it's usually to work. It's ten to ten at night and I've just finished writing a design overview as an output from a meeting I had to call today to prevent a project going off the rails.

Taking the turnip challenge

I have recently been involved in responding to a tender to build a scientific instrument. When I say "recently", what I actually mean is that I've been dealing with this tender for the past THREE YEARS. Because everyone likes a nice bit of government bureaucracy* don't they?

Initially I prepared a quote for the researcher. He had a small fit when he saw the price and insisted he could make the same thing cheaper himself. I politely suggested that in that case, he should do just that. Funnily enough, he didn't decide he could do it himself. Instead, we proceeded with technical negotiations about just what was required. And then... it turned out that the price had exceeded some magic threshold and the whole project had to go to public tender, and we've been stuck in that morass for some time. I've even had legally dubious communications direct from the researcher "instructing" me in the correct answers to provide to the purchasing department. I have ignored them.

I've been trying to think of way to explain the frustration I'm having with this particular tender, without descending into obscure technical jargon, and I think I've come up with a reasonable analogy. Obviously, what we actually build are mass spectrometers, but just for now, I'm going to pretend that we make cross-bows. And we also make the arrows, and the targets, and a camera. And we absolutely promise our customers that if they set the cross-bow up exactly as we tell them, and position the target exactly where we tell them, and set up the camera to watch the target at just the right distance, and load the arrow exactly as we tell them, then when they fire the arrow it will hit the bullseye of the target, and the camera will capture the result.

Sometimes, though we don't like to do it, we sell only part of this whole set up, and we let the customer supply the remaining part of the equipment. Our rule of thumb however, is that this Never Ends Well. In this case, the customer is supplying both the arrows and the camera. And they are refusing to place an order for our cross-bow unless we guarantee that their arrow will be seen to hit the bullseye of the target. But they won't tell us anything about their arrow, or their camera. It might be a man standing three miles away with an iPhone. We've offered to lend them our arrow and our camera and prove the cross-bow works. But no, they want their arrow and their camera. And I'm refusing. Because, while they might make a perfectly balanced, beautifully flighted arrow, they might try and use a turnip. And I'm not promising anything about turnips.

You might think I'm exaggerating about the turnip, but I've been caught out too many times with the things our customers have "forgotten" to tell us until it's too late....

... like the customer who didn't mention he was going to put our instrument in a helicopter** and take it to the top of the Jungfraujoch.

... like the customer who didn't mention that he was going to install our instrument inside the Arctic circle and wanted an installation visit there.

... like the customer who didn't mention that the entire instrument would be disassembled when it arrived on site and then rebuilt inside a lead-lined box through holes no larger than 60cm across.

... like the customer who didn't mention that he needed the entire instrument to operate at 200 degrees Celsius.

... like the customer who didn't mention that he intended to analyse Uranium hexafluoride

... like the customer who didn't mention that the instrument would need to run in the back of a van being driven along pot-holed roads**.

... like the customer who didn't mention that the instrument would be installed in a hospital and needed to meet medical electronics standards***.

... like the customer who didn't mention that the thing he was asking us to do was widely accepted as being impossible****.

There have been far too many occasions when the psychological equivalent of a turnip has been lobbed our way for me to believe in the non-existence of a turnip in this case. So I'm digging my heels in, and seeing what the wheels of bureaucracy do. So far, each revolution of the wheel is doing what a wheel does, and returning to the starting point. I've now been asked to make promises about the performance of a turnip three times, and I've said no three times. Your move Mr Turnip...



* In this instance, not our own government, another government that has really, really, really mastered bureaucracy.

** As a general rule, precision scientific instruments are not built with sufficient shock absorbers to withstand travel. We now always ask our customers if the instrument is going to be moved around.

*** We found a way round this. Medical electronics is a huge can of worms.

**** It remains one of the high points of my career that I did it anyway.

A cure for Imposter Syndrome

Most of you will probably be aware of Imposter Syndrome, even if you've never heard it called that. It's one of my specialist areas. It's that sense I have that I'm winging it, just about managing to maintain a facade of competence and knowledge, a gossamer thin veil being all that stands between my devastating ignorance and discovery. The conviction that everyone else knows what they're doing and all it would take is one wrong step, one mis-placed word, one stupid question to reveal that I am completely out of my depth, unqualified for the job I do, undeserving of my position.

I spend my life working with very, very intelligent people, the kind of people who say things like "well, as I recall, the thermal energy of an atom is about a fortieth of an eV, so we can approximate the mean free path as..." over lunch. The kind of people who assume that everyone works out the orbit of the moon from first principles. In their heads.

I don't spend my whole time tip-toeing around, waiting for the penny to drop amongst my colleagues, and for them to finally realise that the emperor has no clothes and that I am in truth just a rather bewildered muppet. But the thought is always lurking there, just under the surface, waiting to pounce. Always ready to whisper in my ear, "you're not good enough you know, and any minute now, everyone's going to see through you for the fraud that you are."

Just recently though, I've begun to feel a little less like an idiot. A little less as though my incompetence is hiding behind a thin veneer of technical jargon, flung around like confetti. 'What could possibly be the source of such a huge step forward?' I hear you cry. 'Has PhysicsBear experienced a profound metaphysical shift in self perception, suddenly allowing her to see her own abilities in a realistic light?' you might clamour. Not exactly. What's actually happened is that I've been attempting to train two new employees to undertake a few of the testing jobs that have traditionally fallen to me.

Back in the mists of time, my boss trained me to do these tasks. My boss possesses a terrifying intellect, and has a bewildering mix of enormous arrogance, and total lack of self-awareness that allows him to "know" that he's always right, while simultaneously assuming that he's no brighter than anyone else. His approach to training me rather reflected that view. He had me sit with him while he undertook the task in question, and thereafter I was in charge of all subsequent tests. If I had a problem, I could consult him, but received rather short shrift if the solution was something that I "should" have spotted. It was a bit of an extreme approach, but I swam instead of sinking, so I suppose one could say it worked.

Recently the task of passing on the wisdom earned through my years of experience fell to me. And being a little more generous than my boss, I spent a considerable amount of time explaining what to do, how to do it, why we were doing it and what could go wrong. I provided a powerpoint presentation on the subject. I handed over examples of test documentation guidelines that I'd written in the past. I ensured my trainees were equipped with lab books and pens, and I recommended they take notes of what we were doing.

And so we tested our first piece of equipment, together.

A month rolled past and another, identical, piece of equipment required testing. I handed the job over to my newly-trained engineers. And was greeted with blank looks. I suggested they refer back to their lab books. I was informed "I didn't write any notes. I thought I'd remember." I was somewhat vexed. I went through the tests again, though Firm Words Were Had on the importance of note-taking.

It was not long before another two, identical, pieces of equipment needed testing. Again, I encountered blank looks, a complete, overwhelming absence of understanding of what we were trying to do and why, randomly incorrect attempts at undertaking the tests and (finally) a failure to complete the test sheets, despite assuring me they'd been completed.

And I am simply left thinking... I was never this useless. I didn't require telling half a dozen times. I didn't expect to be spoon-fed every step of the way. I was capable of listening, absorbing information and learning from it, quickly. I am finally, completely and utterly convinced that I was never this useless.

So there you go. If you want to feel an enhanced sense of self-worth - employ people more useless than yourself. But be prepared to accept a significant rise in blood pressure as a consequence.

 

So, protons eh?

Without wanting to get too technical again... sometimes I absolutely bloody despair for the future of science.

We make an instrument called a Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer. It's not our very own unique idea. In fact, it's a pretty well-established technique. The gist of the technique is that we (via magical electrical means that aren't important right now) take a load of water, and add a proton to every water molecule. Then we mix the water-with-a-proton (also known as protonated water or "hydronium") with the interesting stuff we want to analyse. The protonated-water then, very generously, gives up the extra proton to the interesting stuff. Hence "proton transfer".

Here's some little diagrams for you. Because diagrams make the world a better place.

Water-with-a-proton meets interesting stuff

Interesting stuff now has protons

You may have spotted that I have indicate the protons with a little "p", for proton. Now, obviously, I know that you are all beings of supreme intelligence, but just for now I'm going to assume you know about as much as my customers appear to know. 

Can anyone tell me anything at all that they know about protons? Anything perhaps about what charge they have on them? Yes, that's right, they are positively charged. (Are you sure? Yes, I'm positive!)* So I think it would fair to expose you to a little bit more science now (don't panic, stay with me!). One way of looking at a proton is as a positively-charged Hydrogen ion. OK, now non-chemists might think that's a bit weird, but Hydrogen is the simplest element there is - it's just one proton and one electron. And if you steal the electron from it, it's just a proton.

So we'll try those diagrams again, but in a more chemist-y sort of way.

Protonated, positively charged, water meets interesting stuff

See, it's not so bad is it? Instead of a "p" I've just put a little "H+", which also has the benefit of helping our feeble little brains remember that protons are positive. (I could have put p+ for the proton, but this is chemistry, so I've put H+, because chemists prefer elements to sub-atomic particles, even when they're the same thing**).

And again:

Protonated interesting stuff

So, I think we might have a good chance of guessing what charge our interesting stuff has, once it's laid claim to a proton. Especially now we've got the really technical diagram. Do we think it's a negative charge? No, no, we don't, do we? We think it's a positive charge. None of you delightful people would be so pig-headedly, obtusely, mind-numbingly stupid as to ask why their proton transfer reactor didn't make negative ions would you?

Who wants to guess what my customer asked me this week?



* Give me a break! There are so few jokes in physics, I have to get them in when I can.

** Yes, you're absolutely right, physicists do look down on chemists.
 

Skipping the middle man

Some of you, just maybe, have picked up the idea from this blog that occasionally I get a little anxious. I over-think things, I worry, I imagine the worst possible outcomes and then I fret, and panic and get upset as my mind spirals out of control. I also have a tendency towards feeling over-responsible. And a slight list towards stress.

Well, just at the moment I am buffeted by a perfect storm of stress and responsibility. Since being bought by a larger company, we've had a massive upsurge in work, with our parent company placing more orders than we can handle, on top of our "normal" customers. Added to that one of my colleagues left at Christmas, and we haven't replaced him yet, let alone expanded. Well, we've employed a delightful young man on a training contract. And he seems very nice, but eminently unqualified for the role. Inasmuch as a third-class degree in maths and no knowledge of physics or electronics means he's unqualified, but being the son of a friend of the MD means he's got a job anyway. And I get to train him, which obviously isn't adding to my workload at all. And we've employed our cleaner as an electronics technician, because that's the standard career path for cleaners*.

One of the (many) projects our parent company has initiated is for five compact mass spectrometers, of a completely new design, to be delivered at one-monthly intervals starting in June. This is a bit of a departure for us. Normally we make one instrument of a new design, then find all the stupid mistakes we've made, all the things we've forgotten, and all the sneaky bits of physics that were lurking to catch us out. We then completely redesign all the bits that were wrong, and generally the second instrument is a LOT better. This time we get to build five that are completely hopeless need refinement all at once, with almost no chance to modify the design.

I'm feeling slightly flattered that, for the first time ever, the MD has completely delegated the system-design and electronics-design to me. Admittedly, we're so insanely busy, I don't think he really had a choice but to delegate something, but it's nice to know he trusts me enough to allow me to be completely in charge of a project worth a quarter of our annual turnover. The cynical part of my mind knows that it wasn't quite so much "delegation" as "not getting round to it". I simply got on with it when he didn't bother. And I now get to screw up design five instruments at once, not just one.

The upshot of all of this is that I am both incredibly busy at work, and really rather stressed at the level of responsibility.

"Hang on a minute...", I hear you say. "Didn't this post start out commenting upon PhysicsBear's tendency towards anxiety?" Why yes, how astute of you, it did indeed.

I've made a new observation pertaining to my anxiety. By becoming incredibly stressed I have now skipped the middle-man of anxiety and jumped straight to rage. Where I would normally become worried about what other people think, or fret about what might happen next, or become panicked about the unknown... now I become instantly enraged by the hypothetical situations that occur in my mind.

When I start worrying about what other people might think about my mothering, I bypass the "worrying" almost entirely and instead am filled with fury at all those people who dare to criticise me, (see, for example the Bitter Parenting Aside I had not long ago, or even the hints of bolshiness I exhibited shortly afterwards. In both instances I was actually, genuinely, furious with all the imaginary people who were criticising me in my own mind.)

When my mind starts to wander into the realm of "what ifs" it then takes a shortcut to "I don't care! I hate you all and you can bugger off with your bloody opinions!" I become so cross with the opinions of completely non-existent human beings that I can't sleep for arguing with them in my mind.

When I receive an email from a customer who seems not entirely happy, my response is not to become shaky and panicked as I wonder how to handle it, instead I think internally, "sod you, you idiot, you don't deserve the awesomeness that is my instrument!"

I can't help but feel neither of these responses is healthy. My current level of stress certainly isn't, as evinced by the stabbing headache and knotted neck muscles. And I don't suppose my more "normal" anxiety is that good for me either. So I just need to harness a bit of the "screw you world!" attitude of the stressed-me and use it to fight the anxiety of not-stressed-me. Oh, and employ three more people, delegate some of the work, cease to take work so personally, make my manager aware that I'm not able to handle the work-load and develop some better coping skills. Other than that, I'm sorted.



* I'm being a bit harsh there - she used to be an electronics technician but has been out of the industry for a while, having left to satisfy an ambition to work with horses. After finding it hard to earn enough doing that, she resorted to cleaning part-time, and is now a full-time electronics technician again. As you do.

You want to do what?

This is another of "those" posts. The ones were I get excessively technical and start talking about ions and mass spectrometers and stuff. I build them (mass spectrometers, not ions) and they do end up taking up a lot of my brain space. Or the bits that are left over after I've had to decided what my favourite species of rorqual whale is...

So, let me introduce you to a few basic concepts of time-of-flight mass spectrometry, just to lay the groundwork for introducing you to the true depths of frustration I have at dealing with my customer.

Step1: make some ions. It doesn't really matter how, just make some and keep them in a tidy place.

Step 2: hit all of the ions with the same big cricket bat such that they all fly off down a long tube.

Step 3: count how long it takes each ion to get to the other end of the tube. The lightest ions will get there first, the heaviest ones last. By timing how long they take, you know how heavy they are.

Step 4: while those first ions are hurtling down the tube, be busy making some more in the tidy place.

Step 5: as soon as you're certain the heaviest ions have got to the other end, hit the second set of ions with the big cricket bat.

Keep doing the above, over and over and over again. Generally you can manage to do that 20,000 times a second. Quick isn't it? Each time you do it, you add the ions you've counted to a bar chart, and gradually you build up a record of which ions you're making and collecting. You might, for example, make a nitrogen ion every time, and so you'll collect 20,000 nitrogen ions every second, and get a really tall bar on your chart. Meanwhile you might only collect one sulphur dioxide ion every now and then and have maybe 200 of them every second.

There's a catch in all of this though (of course there is). Detecting a single ion is quite tricky. They're awfully small. Just as an example, there are roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them in a grain of salt. Like I said, one is awfully small. So the equipment you use to detect one of the little buggers has to be very, very sensitive. And if something is very, very sensitive, it will have a tendency to notice other things happening. Like fleas farting. Actually, not quite that bad, but if you turn a computer on next to it, it will (falsely) believe it's just seen a load of ions. It picks up electrical noise like small children pick up rude words. So there's always low-level background noise being added to that bar chart. One or two false ions being recorded all the time, randomly scattered all over the chart. Which means that to be absolutely certain that you are actually seeing whatever you're looking for, it needs to have more real ions arriving than there are false ions.

There's some clever statistics you can use to work out whether you really believe you're seeing your interesting chemical, but roughly speaking, on one of our "normal" instruments, we get thousands of ions per second in things we're interested in. Thousands every second. Remember that please. We can, usually, manage to spot a bar on this chart and say it's definitely due to a real chemical if there are, say, at least 10-20 ions per second.

Here we go, this is what I'm talking about:

That scrubbly red line along the bottom is noise, and the spikes sticking up show the number of real ions that have been counted arriving at any given time. The things that take a long time (about 27 microseconds in this case) are the heavier ones, the things that take less time (about 14 microseconds) are the lighter ones.

Now, when you first get an instrument working, chances are it won't work very well. It will need tuning. Just like a piano - you'll get something out of it straight away, but it won't be very pretty. And to tune a mass spectrometer, the best thing to do is ask your software just to show you a running total of how many ions it's counting every second. Nice big number in the middle of the screen that you can see from the other side of the lab. And then you start knob-twiddling.

Up a bit, down a bit, left a bit, right a bit, more gas, less gas, stronger magnet, no magnet. Tweak everything while watching that total, and try and make the number as big as possible. Bingo! You've just tuned a time-of-flight mass spectrometer! (OK, to preserve some dignity and respect here, I should point out that it's not quite as random as that, and frequently takes quite a lot of thinking too, but once we send one of these things to a customer, it's all basically tuned, and they just need to tweak a few things to get everything just perfect. They might get as much as two or three times as many ions once they've fine-tuned things.)

And now we get to the ranty bit.....

I have spent the last few weeks attempting to help a customer via email. He didn't have very much money, so he refused to pay for us to install his instrument. He assured us he could assemble and commission it himself. Never, ever, ever believe a customer who says this. He has bleated about not having any signal, and I have tried every single test I can think of, most of which he has completely ignored because he thinks he knows better. Now, however, he's gone on holiday and his boss has taken over. On the plus side, his boss seems to be intelligent, competent and capable of following instructions and providing meaningful feedback. On the minus side, this has coincided with my boss getting involved because I was stomping round the office muttering about incompetent fuckwittery and he realised I needed some back-up. But now things are beginning to go smoothly, the customer (erroneously in my opinion) thinks it's because my boss is awesome and I'm useless. Sigh.

And things are also only beginning to go smoothly. We finally, in desperation, asked the customer how many ions he actually thought he was making in his tidy place.

3 ions per second.

Yes, that's right, 3. Not 3000, not 300, not even 30, but 3 piffling little ions per second.

And he's been complaining that he can't see them. He actually, honestly thinks it's unreasonable that an un-tuned mass spectrometer is failing to see this. When it was gently pointed out to him that he might have, perhaps, just maybe, not quite enough ions, he did concede we might have a point. So he ran an experiment overnight. And he finally saw some ions.

So now we have to try and tune his instrument with him.

With, say, 3000 ions per second, we can tune an instrument perfectly in a couple of hours. But then, we can watch a nice big number on screen changing in real time as we make adjustments. He has to run an experiment for several hours before he can tell if an adjustment improved things. That couple of hours it might take us will translate to hundreds, or possibly thousands of hours worth of experiments to get to the same point. Weeks or even months of work. To achieve something that should take an afternoon. I can understand why he might be a trifle disappointed.

To say that I'm irritated that he didn't mention this sooner would be an understatement.

To say I'm vexed with the colleague who sold him this instrument without discovering a fundamental problem like this would be putting it mildly.

To say that I'm annoyed that my boss has come up smelling of roses while I look like the incompetent numpty would be a pale shadow of the truth.

To say that I'm peeved that when my customers don't follow my instructions they conclude that I'm the idiot would be to wholly miss the point.

To say that I'm sick and tired of my customers blaming fundamental physical principles on me would be failing to grasp the magnitude of my ire.

On the other hand, the customer seems to be happy now, so I guess I'll just keep my head down...

Customers who vex me

When I went on maternity leave to have LittleBear, my company employed a new person, who also stayed on after my return. One of the good things about having an extra person, aside from it meaning we weren't all insanely over-worked, was that I was able to dump delegate a lot of customer support. I hate customers. But M took over most of my customer support duties, which was just fine with me. Unfortunately (for us) M has now moved on to potentially greener pastures, and the customer support monkey has landed back on my shoulders.

On Thursday, my boss ambled over and asked, "would you rather deal with the Portuguese customer or the SIMS* customer?" I knew that neither of us knew anything whatsoever about the Portuguese customer, as that had been M's project. I also knew that I probably had more detailed knowledge of the SIMS instrument in question, but my boss has more years experience in SIMS. So I did what I thought was the decent thing, threw myself on my sword, and volunteered to handle Portugal. And despite the fact that I ended up sat at my computer, gazing at emails and photographs and yelling obscenities at the screen regarding the wit, intellect and parentage of my Portuguese customer, I still got the better half of the deal.

The SIMS instrument in question has been installed on the other side of the world. It costs about a quarter of a million pounds, has been provided with a site specification that requires its installation in a lab with low vibration, limits on the temperature range, stability of the mains power, supplies of high grade bottled Oxygen and Nitrogen, and a clean room for sample preparation. It is a precision scientific instrument, many parts of which can only be handled when wearing sterile gloves. Most of the internals of the instrument operate at 2,000 volts, with some sections at 5,000 volts and a further section at 25,000 volts. All of these voltages are generated and supplied from large electronic control units that we also supplied.

The support request we had came via our agent, who reported that the PC had stopped working on the instrument. He (in his eyes) had heroically diagnosed the problem. The "lab" the instrument was installed in had such high humidity that water had condensed in the computer and it had stopped working. He had removed the power supply and the memory from the PC, dried them with a hot air blower and put them back. His request? That we supply a replacement PC that was more "stable" as the customer was not happy to have spent so much money for something that stopped working.

Now, I know that not everyone knows and loves electricity the way that I do, but let's just stop here for a moment and consider if there are any important things that we do all know about electricity...

Had a good think?

Yes?

I hope you're with me on this, as I'm pretty certain that the one thing we all know is that electricity and water don't mix. Dropping your hairdryer in the bath is generally seen as a Bad Idea. Pouring tea into the back of your television? Also frowned upon. Hosing down your PC with a sprinkler? Never a success.

So what do we think about running a computer in a room with such high humidity that water condenses into actual droplets inside it and it needs drying with an industrial hairdryer? Probably not what we'd call a wise course of action. Now let's try and imagine whether we think that having water dripping around the place is going to be a good idea when we have a 25,000 volt power supply in the quarter-million-pound, precision scientific instrument? I'll give you a clue. My clue begins with "b" and ends with "ang".

We probably should have known that this instrument was not going to be loved and cared for when a dog wandered in off the street and went to sleep underneath it during the on-site training. The layers of dirt and dust on the floor might have given us a hint that they hadn't quite grasped the concept of "laboratory" let alone "clean room". And now here we are, with a customer who is liable to blow his instrument up in a spectacular, watery, arcing, loud, dangerous explosion. And he wants us to replace his PC to "solve" the humidity problem.

Like I said, a Portuguese customer who fails to read the labels on this equipment is easy in comparison**. I am delighted to say that my boss was feeling quite robust when he replied, so the damp customer received short shrift. Essentially he was told, "unless you provide a suitable laboratory with a controlled climate for the operation of your instrument, we will not support it. Your instrument is NOT under warranty if operated in the conditions you describe. Don't talk to me again until you have sorted this out."

It's a mystery why M would want to leave, when he had people like this to deal with every day, isn't it?



* Not the computer game, but Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) - one of the techniques we specialise in. We make big, shiny instruments for analysing materials' surfaces.

** No, I'm not joking. He has three controls labelled "pulse width", "pulse amplitude" and "static extract". If you had a wire labelled "static extract" and it was plugged into a socket marked "static extract" would you seriously contact the manufacturer to ask, "is the static extract output adjusted with the pulse amplitude control?" No, I didn't think you would. My customer did. I think I've mentioned before that I don't always have a great deal of respect for people just because they have a PhD.

Anglo-Chinese relations

Some of you may recall that, not so long ago, I was responsible for some of the training of a group of Chinese engineers. This considerably-less-than-enterprising bunch have taken the rather-too-enterprising step of deciding to re-badge our instruments in China and pass them off as their own. This has therefore meant that they are going to undertake all the training and maintenance themselves. These are the people who didn't know what an isotope was, and now they want to maintain mass spectrometers and train people to use them. I suddenly feel profound pity for any users of our instruments in China...

On the plus side, our friends from China were at least vaguely aware of their own limitations and therefore requested training from us on maintenance. Not a bad idea, but rather inconveniently they wanted it just when we were in the middle of really, really, really struggling to make their next instrument work. So we had to halt all forward progress and spend a week pulling it apart and teaching them how to put it back together again. And re-teaching them as much as we could about how to use it.

This all happened a couple of weeks ago, and it's taken me that long to try and work out how exactly to express my utter, overwhelming despair at what they don't  know without going all technical and incomprehensible on you. I've decided the only thing to do is attempt to give you a few little snapshots of the things they asked and allow you to fill in the blanks of a whole week filled with this...

Isotopes

Again, and again and again. I cannot begin to fathom what it is that these people don't understand about isotopes, but once again it came as a surprise to them that one element may have more than one isotope and that there is a naturally occurring ratio between these isotopes. For every 500 atoms of oxygen with mass 16 in the world, there's one of mass 18. And this, once again, was a matter of both awe and confusion. Really. And they want to pretend that they make mass spectrometers?

Why are states of matter relevant?

Our delightful visitors wanted to know why they didn't get any results when they tried to analyse solids with our instrument. Now, I would forgive you, dear reader, for thinking that's a reasonable question. But this instrument is a gas analysis instrument. We never did get to the bottom of what exactly they'd done to try and analyse a solid with a gas analysis system - did they try and ram chunks of something through the inlet pipe? More alarmingly, this was a question they returned to more than once.

Why are two different things not the same?

We have one major competitor, and had to fend off a lot of questions about the differences between our instrument and our competitor's instrument. My favourite one remains "why is the pressure in your vacuum chamber different?" Gee, I don't know, how about because the chamber is a different size, shape and composition, containing different components, pumped by different pumps, with a different gas introduction system and measured with a different gauge? Or, more vaguely, because it's totally, completely, and in every way different. You might as well ask why I'm not the same height as my husband. I'm just not.

My vague understanding trumps your hard evidence

Our smallest, roundest visitor, who has still never introduced himself to me, professes to be an engineer. As such he stood in front of the instrument, poking part of it with a screwdriver, informing us that "this cannot seal. Design is no good". He did this while (I repeat) stood in front of the instrument. The instrument was, at that point, under vacuum, and recording a pressure of 10e-7 mbar. (Bloody blogger won't let me format superscripts, so, in longhand, that's ten raised to the power of minus seven millibar. Or 0.0000001 millibar) For those not used to dealing with either exponents or measurements of vacuum - that's ten billion times lower pressure than the atmosphere around you. I think we can comfortably say that the instrument did indeed seal. And yet small-round remained adamant that it could not possibly work. What can you do in the face of such willful, obstinate intransigence?

Why is life not perfect?

I spent quite a long time explaining why it is impossible to detect two ions that arrive simultaneously when you have a single ion detector. That alone took a depressingly long time. I then moved on to explain that actually there will be a distribution of flight times even for ions of the same mass. (OK, I admit, this is going to get a bit technical, but bear with me).

Imagine, if you will, a time-trial race, where each runner sets off in turn, on their own, running only against the clock. The runners are all corralled together in a large pen, but none of them know when they're going to start, so they're all milling around, wandering back and forth, bending down to tie their shoelaces, until suddenly one is yelled at to "go!"  Each runner runs at exactly the same speed, but they won't all complete the course in the same time, as they will all have set off from slightly different positions, some of them will have already been walking in the right direction and so will get a head-start, whereas some of them will have been walking the wrong way, so will be slower.  If the conditions on the course change while they're running, then they may speed up or slow down slightly as well. So, even though they're all the same, there will be a spread in their race times. That's more or less what happens in our instruments, but instead of runners we have ions.

Broadly speaking, the more money you spend, the better chance you have a of getting all your ions to take the same length of time to complete the course. But I spent at least an hour attempting to justify why all the ions don't arrive within 250 picoseconds of each other. And the answer is essentially: because physics; because thermodynamics; because life.

And the response? "But wouldn't it be better if they all took the same time?" Well, yes, life would be lovely if everything was perfect. Why didn't I think of that?

Why are two different things not the same (Redux)?

We were challenged to explain why our competitor's instrument produced a mass spectrum from a sample of tea that was not the same as that obtained from our instrument. The conversation went something like this:

Us: Did you collect the data on competitor's instrument?
Them: No, they published it, and we saw that data.
Us: So, when you then tried the experiment on our instrument, did you use the same tea sample?
Them: No.
Us: OK. Well, was it at least the same type of tea.
Them: No
Us: Erm, so why would you expect the same result?
Them: ... <blank looks>

They genuinely seemed bewildered when asked why they thought two completely different samples, when analysed, should give identical results. I refer you again to the fact that these "engineers" and "scientists" are now responsible for training people to use our instruments in China. Bow your heads and weep for the future of analytical chemistry in the East...

Work in a microcosm

I was making my lunch in the kitchen at work today - a sort-of Caesar salad. One of my colleagues saw me shredding some chicken and held out a bottle to me, saying, "If you're having chicken, you should have some of this sauce that I bought just for having on chicken." The bottle was an unctuous gloop called balsamic BBQ glaze or somesuch. Kind of him to offer, but not what I was after. With a cheery smile I responded, "it's OK thanks, I have my own dressing, and besides, I'm putting avocado in this salad and I'm not keen on balsamic vinegar with avocado." Unprovocative and suitably appreciative I thought...

Then my colleague said, "oh, but if you're having avocado, you should have that yellow dressing you can get, it's great with avocado." At which point another colleague chipped in, "ooh, yes, definitely that yellow one, it's great with avocado, you should be having that."

At which point I wanted to yell, "this is my fucking lunch, I've got the dressing that I want, I'm making the salad that I want, why can't you lot just leave me and my lunch alone?"

And when I say "wanted to yell", obviously what I actually mean is that that is basically exactly what I said, because I mean, really. It was my lunch. Nobody batted an eyelid and they continued to talk about their sodding yellow dressing, whatever the hell it is.

Now, can you imagine working in an environment where everybody has an opinion on everything you do, irrespective of whether their opinion is helpful, valid or sought after? And that they continue to blather on about their opinion even when you tell them in the bluntest manner possible to shut up. This is my world. This is my work. This is why I am occasionally rabid.

A sow's ear from a silk purse

Anyone who has received a Christmas card from me in the last few years will know that I make my own. I generally do some sort of calligraphy or illuminated piece of text. A few years ago I (along with a few of my colleagues) made some rather disparaging remarks about the quality of Christmas card we were using at work. When I then sent out my own cards, the Chairman was sufficiently taken with my design that he asked if I would design a card for the company. I did so last year, and then somehow it was assumed I would do so again this year. More fool me, I made another one this year. More fool for more than one reason. For one thing, even after only two years, it's now being taken for granted that I will spend hours of my free time producing a piece of artwork for the company. For another thing, I rashly completed work's card before my own, and mine is now languishing at the back of a queue of other more urgent projects (see LittleBear's birthday cake, LittleBear's birthday presents, LittleBear's broken toys that need mending, keeping the family fed, clothed, bathed and if at all possible sane). I fear for the chances of actually finishing it and getting it printed in time to write, address and post cards before Christmas. Again. Same as every year.

However, that's not my main problem with this particular project. My main problem is what the Chairman has done with my design. It's a hand-painted, hand-lettered design. In fact, here it is, in not-very-well-scanned format:

 

You get the idea. At its heart it is a piece of lettering. It is all about the font. 

And do you know what the Chairman has done? Do you know what font he has used inside the card for the greeting? He has used Microsoft Comic Sans. An excrescence on the face of the world. An insult to every well-proportioned font known to man. A festering pustule on the face of typography. When shown his draft of the greeting, I objected to Comic Sans in the strongest possible terms (translation: I swore like a navvy). His answer? "Well I like it". And now I've seen the proof back from the printer, and there Comic Sans squats, lumpen and ugly inside my card. What I want to do is stomp in, snatch my design back and say "screw you! If you can't respect my views of my own artwork, you don't deserve it!" But I won't, because I'm feeling a bit too munchkin-like for that. But it's the last time I design a card for work. They can used another crappy photoshopped picture of the cathedral in the snow next year.

 

Capitalism in Action

Avid followers of my Facebook status updates may be aware that the small, charmingly-eccentric but brilliant-when-it-needs-to-be company that I work for has recently been largely taken over by a massive Chinese company. I say "largely" because they've bought a controlling stake in us, but don't want a hand in the day-to-day running. To put it in context, there are nine of us here, and four of us work part-time in some fashion - two because they're nearing retirement, one because he's retrained as a psychotherapist and does that one and half days a week, and me because I look after LittleBear two days a week. The company that's bought us has an annual turnover of £1 billion and employs over a thousand people.

Up until now, the company has always been privately-owned, largely by the founding members. Occasionally one of them has sold shares. There's also been a tranche of shares that have been sold around between three or four other companies who've at various times been interested in our technology. Not being a founder member, I didn't start out with any shares, but did buy a handful when they came up for sale. Only a handful, as they were £1 a share. The founders got their shares at £0.01 a share, just for context.

So... SDL invested £1.65 million in purchasing shares. I received £2,800 of this. The (three man) board of directors, who are the founders and majority shareholders, received most of that investment. Which is fair enough, given they founded the company. The fact that I (and the other drudges employees) have sweated blood for the good of the company for almost as long is irrelevant. I've been here 17 years out of the 25 we've been in business, but I wasn't in at the beginning, so it counts for nothing. Or 0.17% actually, which rounds down to nothing.

Meanwhile in China, despite the crash on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the announcement that SDL had bought us resulted in their share price jumping by 10%, adding £200 million to their value. Mr Big, who founded SDL, promptly sold 2% of his shares and realised £4 million. Which is pretty good off the back of a £1.65 million investment on 9 men in a shed.

So there we go, being in the right place at the right time gets you money. Employing really, really good people and convincing them to work hard for your benefit gets you lots of money. Having lots of money gets you lots more money. Working your arse off for a company? Not so much. Capitalism in Action. Now, where's that ballot paper with Jeremy Corbyn's name on it?

For the sake of balance, I will point out that I have earned a good salary for 17 years, no longer have a mortgage, have had fun and interesting work, have worked with some of the brightest and best in the world, and for some of the most revered scientific institutions on the planet, so it has not been an unrewarding or thankless experience. I would not in fact mind in the slightest that the directors have profited so massively if even one of them showed the remotest shred of humility, or the slightest jot of appreciation that the company has only succeeded and only brought them their good fortune because of the accumulated blood, sweat and tears of all of us. When faced with venal, hand-rubbing smugness at how splendid it is that we've "all" done so well, or self-righteous pride at how much they "deserve" their good fortune, quite frankly I want to gouge certain money-grubbing hearts out with a spoon. Even a simple "thank you" would do. Once. In seventeen years.


 

I wasn't expecting that

There we go.

Done.

Two full mornings of training five Chinese engineers completed. I say five, but most of the time it was four, as one of them only swanned in half way through the morning each day and then sat at the back looking bored and slightly grumpy. Not really sure what that was all about, other than an excellent technique for disconcerting me. I mean, he was staying in the same hotel as the others, and they got a taxi to come here in the morning, and nobody made any comment at all about his absence or subsequent mysterious arrival. Maybe he's their minder from the Chinese government? Who knows.

I introduced myself, handed round my business cards, and... that was it. I still don't know all their names. There's Una, who's the one who speaks good English, and acts as translator for the tricky questions. And there's Dr Hu, and I have to try very hard not to say "Allons-y!" to him or indeed grin when I say his name. The others I merely know as Delinquent-Arrival-Man, Little-Man and Round-Man.

The lectures I've given have been... different. For a start, there's been a video camera pointed at me the whole time, plus occasional photos taken at random moments, for no obvious reason. They even took a photo of me eating my lunch. I'm beginning to feel a bit like that cute little tamarin in the zoo, being photographed no matter what I do. While I'm lecturing, sometimes my students are tapping away at their phones, or on their laptops. To be fair, I think they're taking notes on their laptops. I'm not so sure it isn't Candy Crush on the phones. I'll talk for a while, with slides up on the projector and then suddenly there'll be an animated interjection in Mandarin (or perhaps it's Cantonese, I can't honestly say I'd know the difference). Una will then gesticulate, write and hector the others, presumably explaining the points I've just been making. The others will, I think, disagree on some issue, and Una will respond. Maybe she's just telling them to stop playing Candy Crush. After a few minutes of excitable exchanges, Una then turns to me with a delightful smile and says "Please carry on". So I do.

Sometimes the stumbling block is a single word:

Una: what is biwt?
PB: built?
Una: yes, biwt
PB Built... erm... made, constructed, formed, machined, put together, assembled... <runs out of off-the-cuff synonyms>
Una: how do you spell?
PB: <writes "built" down>
Una: Ah! biwt!

Now, I'm not being critical at all of their ability to understand English, they're frankly doing a pretty impressive job at following anything across such a massive language barrier. But you can imagine it's hard to describe the technical details of a mass spectrometer when you can easily get stuck on a simple word like "built". I have severe doubts about whether they understood what I was talking about when it's things like the ageing effect of electron bombardment on the secondary electron coefficient of the surface of an ion detector.

Ah, you're thinking, but technical language is what crosses cultural and language barriers. Science is the new lingua franca, you may be thinking. Just because they don't understand some English words, they'll be right at home with electrostatic potentials and poisson distributions, you could contend. Maybe you're not thinking those things, but I was kind of hoping them. However... after two and a half hours of lecture, practical demonstration, diagnostic tests and studying schematics for an ion detector and high-speed, small-signal pre-amplifier, I asked if there were any further questions about what I'd taught them. They asked "what material is the lid of the box made from?". Seriously? You've just been shown how to capture single ions arriving on an oscilloscope and the only thing you ask is what the lid is made from? And they all wrote the answer down in their notebooks. (It was stainless steel by the way. I promise that's completely useless information.)

The next question initially seemed as if it was going to be a bit better. Little-Man produced a draft copy of the user manual and waved it at me and asked if I could show him one of the procedures in it. I looked at it. It was the procedure I had just shown them. So, we did it again, with much nodding and concurring. Exactly the same nodding and concurring as far as I could tell as I had received the first time round. How the hell I'm supposed to know if they've understood is a mystery to me. I keep asking them if they're happy, if they're following it, if there's anything they want to know. What more can I do?

More alarming were the bits of pure science we got hung up on. These people are intending to develop applications for this mass spectrometer, so we were rather naively hoping they'd know a bit about chemistry and masses of molecules. First my colleague and then I got rather bogged down in explaining what an isotope is. Now, with apologies to the non-scientists who may be reading this, but what?! I mean, really, what?! You want to develop mass spectrometry applications and you don't know what an isotope is? You actually think the mass of chlorine is 35.5 Daltons? I promise you, you will never see a peak at 35.5 Da. You'll see a peak at 35 Da and one at 37 Da, and the one at 35 Da will be three times the size of the one at 37 Da. On average the mass of chlorine may be 35.5 Da, but any one atom is either 35 Da or 37 Da. You don't have half a neutron swanning around in a chlorine nucleus. I am still boggled in the mind to find that they didn't understand about isotopes. Isn't that GCSE Chemistry?

Once I'd got into the swing of this method of presenting - talk, interrupt, private discussion, resume - I chilled out completely. For one thing, I became instantly and reassuringly confident that I knew infinitely more than my students about what I was saying. For another thing, I knew they weren't going to spring any subtle and awkward questions on me, as I was going to be lucky if they grasped the basics and never mind the subtlety.

And I developed a Someone Else's Problem Field about that damned video camera. My mind just glances off the fact that they are taking videos back with them to review and study and pore over and learn from and... oh shit, what did I say that they're going to come back and ask me about? Quick, mind, start glancing off that thought again!

And I'm definitely not going to think about the possibility of them using videos of me as training material for other engineers once they get back home.. I think I might be feeling a little queasy now...

Not half as queasy as they're going to get watching the videos though. There was one point where I was demonstrating how to make some measurements on the top of this 1.6m tall instrument. I'm not tall enough to do it without a step, and neither are they. So I stood on the step to put the probes in place, then invited them to take turns stepping up and looking. Seems fair, yes? Would have been a lot easier without Little-Man holding the end of his tripod so he could wave the video camera in the air by my head to film what I was doing, and Round-Man sticking his iPhone in to take photographs of what I was doing. If that video doesn't induce sea-sickness and bewilderment, I don't know what will.

So, somewhat as my rational mind predicted, the training was fine. I didn't say anything stupid, nobody put me on the spot in a way I couldn't handle, I'd prepared all the material in time, I didn't break out in a cold sweat. All good really. Apart from the nagging sense that I've completely and utterly wasted my time and the poor buggers don't really have a clue what on earth I was blethering on about...