Opening the floor

Well. As my regular readers (who are dwindling in number, understandably) have probably surmised, this quarter is yet another mildly-panic-inducing busy one. Somehow there have been fewer wacky stories to report from my latter days in MSE-land (besides the situation-specific Dr. Sahai brand of personalized zingers). Some ten of us metallurgy kids (plus Gary) did head over to Dublin for metal casting lab last week, though, and we watched from above the induction furnace as the professionals mixed up a batch of alloys for us. The pros wore these shiny silver spacesuit-type outfits to protect them from the intense heat, although really they looked like leftovers from one of those restaurants that wraps your food in fancy foil. One guy even took his ensemble up a notch by wearing Mork suspenders. Then, once we’d spent a sufficient amount of time inhaling magnesium oxide, I felt compelled to rattle off the theme songs to two of the best Nickelodeon shows from my childhood, “Hey Dude” and “Salute Your Shorts.” (The singing wasn’t entirely unprompted–the youngsters in my class were reminiscing about old Nick shows and couldn’t remember the words to the theme songs. I guess they never crammed their impressionable heads full of ridiculous lyrics like I did. The result: they do well on MSE tests, and I sing about man-eating jackrabbits and killer cacti.)

Anyway, I’m opening the floor to the few hardy souls who have made their way to this sparse little blog. What topic(s) or question(s) would you like to see covered in Caitlin’s Wide World of MSE? If I don’t know the answer to any questions you may have (which is highly likely), I will hunt down the answer and report back. Viva la fearless journalism!