In Doc Fry’s electronics class, I learned my first engineering standard: resistor color coding. Each color represented a number. Each color also represented a multiplier–power of ten. Some colors also represented a tolerance. The position of the color band indicated how to interpret the color as a number, multiplier or tolerance. A simple standard for…
Tag: NIST
Playing with Motors
Computers can move things? Wow, this was going to be a fun summer! These thoughts crossed my mind as I began a summer job with the National Bureau of Standards in 1982. My introduction to computer languages came in high school when I took a class on BASIC. Mr. Chapman, a math teacher, had acquired…
Angling with Ellipsometry
Expertise in a field could be viewed as much as a weakness as it is strength. You become so focused on the current problem at hand that you don’t question the fundamentals. To counter that thought– learning a new field gives weight to the adage “never assume.” In the case of Ellipsometry and Dean Chandler-Horowitz:…