Transmutation

I started my internship at PSU this week. We are continuing our studies of cold fusion, pretty much where I left off two years ago. There are subtle variations to the theme of electrolysis, but none have been too drastic. While I enjoy the work, the experience is much less exciting for the second time, for nothing is new!

Today I did quite a bit of work with the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and x-ray spectrometer. I must say that the SEM we are using is probably from the early 1970s, and is one of the more humorous contraptions I have seen. It fills an entire room and has a gigantic control board filled with knobs, radio switches, and square plastic buttons that light up like those on the original Star Trek. It breaks down an average of probably 3 to 4 times in a full day of usage. Just today, Wushou had to refill the liquid nitrogen in the x-ray detector, realign the filament, fiddle with connectors beneath the control board, tape the cap of a button back on, and figure out why the chamber was not evacuating properly--it turns out that a gear was stuck in what I believe is the rotory pump. Needless to say, it was cause for celebration when it was working. But there was another interesting development. On a palladium electrode that had undergone 100 hours of electrolysis, certain isolated regions on the surface were found to contain silver in concentrations (relative to palladium) of as much as 90%. This is more evidence for transmutation. No such regions were found before the electrolysis, and there is no silver used in any stage of the production or testing process.

When I was sick and tired of broken SEMs and x-ray detectors, and my skin had started to turn a pasty hue from being stuck in dark basement rooms, I decided to go out and buy a lunch from the Chaat House. I tried desperately to find Suwasti, Jonathan's favorite Thai food cart, but I had to resign my self to negotiating with the Indian guy wearing the turban, who runs the Chaat House, for their famous and ever-changing 5-course lunch special. At five glorious dollars, it is enough to feed me for about a day. Today's fare seemed a bit lighter than normal, having no paneer or ghee, so I was able to consume most of it in the plywood hut constructed for their customers. I always go there with Jonathan, so I never just sit to watch and listen to the people who drop by to eat; normally we're the ones being watched and listened to. There were the usual businesspeople, buying lunches for themselves and all their friends, and an obligatory hippie type with long uncut hair, which was wavy and dull yellow from being poorly maintained. It was nothing out of the ordinary. About five minutes later a group of people walked into the plywood hut. They were all caucasian, but they wore short turbans of various colors. From the bits of conversation that my ears caught, they were either students or employees in some kind of meditational massage institution. The most dominant conversationalist was talking about some kind of teacher who made his left side tingly during meditation without touching him, but then he gave him a massage, or something like that. It was highly unusual. They ordered some chaat, a couple of lunch specials, and some mango lasses. When they were ordering, the man in the turban inside wiped his forehead and said, "Your head get hot in this thing, doesn't it?" The tandoori over probably made the interior of the cart unbearably hot, even in the pleasant breezy warmth outside. He asked the leader of the turban-wearing massage gang, "Do people ever give you hard time for wearing this thing?"

The turban-massager man replied in the negative.

"The other day, I see someone, and he was like, 'Go back to your country.' I was like, 'Hey man, which country?'"

My watch indicated that I needed to start the ten-block journey back to my basement office in Science Building 1. I folded the naan back into the aluminum foil and snatched up one last garbanzo bean, then left the hut to get back to work.