Story Telling: The Princess and the Heat treated plain carbon steels.

I have to write a formal lab report and the brief includes 'story telling'. Here we go.


Once upon a time there was a magical prince who was trapped in a scary castle which had three plain carbon steel doors.
The first door had been heated to 860ºC then allowed to cool.
The second door had also been heated to 860ºC then quenched by dropping the hot metal into water.
The Third door had been heated and quenched like the second one, then heated to 650ºC again.

The princess, who wanted to rescue him, only had one good lance that would break if it was used on a door that was too hard. So the princess, knowing that only one lance meant only one chance, went to the lab to find out which door she should try and break down.

Initially the princess used the Jominy test to determine the Vickers Hardness. The test involved making an imprint with a diamond at set distances from the quenched end then comparing the results for the different samples. From this the princess found that second and third doors had a much higher Vickers hardness.

Next the princess carried out the Charpy impact test, where the samples were hit with a big heavy pendulum and the energy absorbed was measured and from this the princess found the third door was ductile, the second door was brittle and the first door had some plastic deformation.

The princess deduced that although the second door had a harder surface than the first, it would break under smaller force.
So the princess went back to the castle, broke down the second door with her lance then saved the prince. And they lived happily ever after.

Lab Coat

Occasionally, I have to wear a lab coat. It makes me feel quite professional.




The trouble is, as it has poppers instead of buttons, and throughout the lab session I will repeatedly do up all the poppers...



Take hold of both sides...



Then rip it open as if I am superman.

So much for professional.

McGritte

Yesterday I went to see the Rene Magritte exhibition at the Tate Liverpool. It was fantastic.

But the problem was that it reminded me of what happened two years ago on the same dock when visiting Liverpool for a Uni open day.

Once the open day was over I had time to kill so I decided to walk around Albert Dock which I'd been to before and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Whilst walking past a gift shop that sold naval models and Beatles memorabilia, I noticed ahead of me a poster.

The poster was like Magrittes 'The Son of Man' but with a burger in front of the face instead of an apple, and I was blown away, I thought it was brilliant.

I felt it was poking fun at fast food shops and making a point about modern obesity.

It was saying junk food is now where fruit should be.

I thought I'd never seen such a perfect piece of artwork.

But then I realised I was staring at a burger shop and that this was an advert for it.

Never has my opinion changed so quickly. It immediately lost all its charm and wit, I felt betrayed.

The conception of the idea which in my mind started as 'Lets show how society has changed whilst paying homage a great painting' had become 'What's famous that we can put a burger on?'.

I wouldn't be surprised to see The Mona Lisa eating some nuggets, Van Goghs Sunflowers covered in chips or Michelangelos David holding a bucket of chicken.

Community support offences.

The other day I was standing at a pelican crossing waiting for the green man.
Across the road from me were two community support officers, on the beat, also waiting to cross the road.

Community support officers always seem to get a hard time from everyone, being ridiculed for not being proper police.
I never really understood the anger aimed at them, until I saw them that day.

Once the traffic died down, these two 'officers' crossed the road despite the fact that the red man was still clearly lit up. Do these two have no respect for rules! Clearly they wont be made into proper police any time soon if they can't even cross the road properly. I mean, how are supporting the community with that lack of respect.

I stood there in quiet shock until the red man's active eco-friendly downstairs neighbour lit up.

I now get that CSOs deserve all the teasing.

Post Womad Blues Post

This will be the last post I do about Womad.

A new thing this year was that the inside of the Siam tent was beautifully decorated, usually it is just plain.



At night it was even lovelier.

Stalls.

At Womad there were many stalls, some with great names and some without.
These are my favourites.




This (in my opinion) was the best.




I like this one just because it's probably named after The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.




Whereas this one needed to be more specific about what it actually sold.





I'm assuming from the name that you borrow soup and return it when you're finished.








This one just puzzled me.





And I will end on a pun.

WOMAD!

Last weekend I went to Womad. Its a world music festival in Wiltshire and this is the fifth year I've been.

It was brilliant, fun and sunny.

These are my three musical highlights.

1) Brassroots.

http://www.brassrootsmusic.com/

They are (as the name suggests) a brass band that play re-imaginings of songs. Very energetic and crowd pleasing. Halfway through their set I realized I've seen them twice before at local venues.

From where I was standing they looked like this...



2) Booker T. Jones

http://www.bookert.com/

From Booker T and the MGs, he played a load songs for which the MGs were the backing band such as Sam and Dave's 'Hold on, I'm coming' and a song he wrote with Neil Young called Potato Hole. But the best bit was he said "I'm now going to play a song I wrote when I was in high school and recorded with Booker T and the MGs. Green Onions." and the crowds collective whoop as he started playing the riff.

Here is a picture. Booker T is on the left.


3) Gogol Bordello

http://www.gogolbordello.com/

They played last on the Sunday night and gave the festival a proper send off. Their high energy gypsy punk music went down a storm. I'm really glad I've seen them, I mean how many people can write a decent song that includes quantum mechanics.

This is what I saw.



Womad is still amazing to go to after so long, I don't think I'll ever tire of it.