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Snake Oil Department, Top This

Your work covers a lot of bases. OMG I can’t BELIEVE I said that…

Well, I was hoping Dr. Hardy wasn't going to get all salty when I mixed them into his post. ;)
 
Dude! No wonder they cost so much, coming in that fitted case and all.
View attachment 352663

Now -- why would one need a fitted travel case for items that are going to be deployed underneath large, heavy loudspeakers?
Am I being too rational?

If one responds -- well, maybe you'd need it if you're going to move, and the system needs to be disassembled and transported. Well, OK, but wouldn't one also want similar cases for the loudspeakers themselves?
The case is so you can display them for guests at dinner parties. They work just as well in the case as they do under the speakers.
 
Dude! No wonder they cost so much, coming in that fitted case and all.
View attachment 352663

Now -- why would one need a fitted travel case for items that are going to be deployed underneath large, heavy loudspeakers?
Am I being too rational?

If one responds -- well, maybe you'd need it if you're going to move, and the system needs to be disassembled and transported. Well, OK, but wouldn't one also want similar cases for the loudspeakers themselves?
The answer is easy: unboxing videos
You never know who will do one and a little aluminum case like this is really good. And at a few thousand $/€, a suitcase like this has to be included in the price.

But I would do it exactly the same way. Pack all eight parts individually + time required + packaging material, so that nothing is damaged during shipping due to the heavy parts, it has to be nice for the price, plus outer packaging...
An aluminum/plastic case like this can be a more sensible and cheaper solution. Open the suitcase, put 8 products in, close the suitcase, done. Depending on the number of pieces, it costs between 5 and 15 $/€ and boxes for shipping are included.
 
The answer is easy: unboxing videos
You never know who will do one and a little aluminum case like this is really good. And at a few thousand $/€, a suitcase like this has to be included in the price.

But I would do it exactly the same way. Pack all eight parts individually + time required + packaging material, so that nothing is damaged during shipping due to the heavy parts, it has to be nice for the price, plus outer packaging...
An aluminum/plastic case like this can be a more sensible and cheaper solution. Open the suitcase, put 8 products in, close the suitcase, done. Depending on the number of pieces, it costs between 5 and 15 $/€ and boxes for shipping are included.
Designing custom packaging costs more. This is the easy way.
 
Well, I was hoping Dr. Hardy wasn't going to get all salty when I mixed them into his post. ;)
As a carbohydrate biochemist, all I can say is sweet.

1709072644004.png
 
I just inherited the physical chemistry lab, and my predecessor left it a wreck. One of my seniors observed, "The connection between Dr.XXX and safety is a tenuous one." And in my cleanup, I discovered a large can of sodium metal and another large can of potassium metal. In a wooden storage cabinet. Next to acids. I pretended not to be alarmed and moved everything. At least there was no dry picric acid...

If you want real fun, put sodium and potassium together to make NaK alloy.
 
I pretended not to be alarmed and moved everything.

Was there anyone around to report how well that pretending went?
 
Was there anyone around to report how well that pretending went?
My students saw a very calm-appearing prof. Emphasis on "appearing."

If we get another hard freeze over one of our lakes before spring break, I'm going to do the old "drop a chunk on the ice and stand back."
 
My father worked in a USI pilot plant in the 1950s in Curtis Bay (south Baltimore), MD.
If I remember the story right, they were piloting methods to disperse sodium metal (flakes?) in kerosene or some similar organic fluid for safe transport in railroad (tank) cars. As a consequence of this, they had a lot of metallic sodium on hand. He and his colleagues took great delight in heaving chunks of sodium out into the bay, where they'd the sodium would - essentially - detonate.
Or so he said. :)
 
My father worked in a USI pilot plant in the 1950s in Curtis Bay (south Baltimore), MD.
If I remember the story right, they were piloting methods to disperse sodium metal (flakes?) in kerosene or some similar organic fluid for safe transport in railroad (tank) cars. As a consequence of this, they had a lot of metallic sodium on hand. He and his colleagues took great delight in heaving chunks of sodium out into the bay, where they'd the sodium would - essentially - detonate.
Or so he said. :)
When I was in high school (at an all boys school), we had anhydrous sodium metal in our chemistry class one day; our professor had just done some pinhead experiment with some tiny sliver he had cut off (I recall how soft it was) to cause a little mini bonfire by dropping it into a glass of water. I honestly don’t know what we were meant to learn from these pyrotechnics, but he seemed awfully excited about it.

Anyway, we had a fairly large koi pond right outside the science building, and one of the more chromosomally-challenged of my classmates retrieved the block of it (preserved in oil I believe?) from the chemistry cabinet after class. You can see where this is going.

While a group of us stared in abject horror, he gleefully tossed it into the pond. It was about the size of a half-stick of butter. Suddenly our little alcove outside the science building became the front of Rockefeller Center, and we saw every one of the 100 or so koi float instantly to the surface, ready to serve on a platter with lemon garnishes.

He got instantly expelled, predictably. I think arrested too. Darwin Award. I think he works at a bank or something now. No more koi pond at my high school—they covered it in concrete and there’s a planetarium there now. Curiously there were no consequences for my chemistry teacher, but I think he stopped doing that little experiment. Future generations suffered a huge gap in their STEM knowledge. I think I learned a lot more from my classmate’s experiment to be honest—I was sure never to get my personal supply of anhydrous sodium near the cat’s water bowl…
 
How exciting! You’re dealing with one of the most potent toxins known to man. Slow-acting and alluring, but with an unmatched kill rate.
I actually worked on way more interesting carbohydrates involved in cell-cell recognition, protein trafficking, that sort of stuff.
But most of those really aren't very sweet. ;)

In my first biotech job, I did work on one of the most truly toxic (on a weight or molar basis) things around -- the Ricinus communis agglutinin (obtained from castor beans) known as ricin. Worked for a company (which ultimately has become quite successful -- although it took 'em a long time) that was making anti-cancer immunocongugates (immunotoxins). We had (from a toxicity standpoint) terrifying amounts of ricin (hundreds of grams) in our manufacturing facility located - no kidding - sharing a warehouse-style building with an MVP Sports store in a little strip mall like place on the Automile (US Route 1) in Norwood, MA. My lab - for about a year of the four years I worked for the company - was there, too.

Fun times.
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Ricin is actually really interesting stuff, both in terms of how it targets and gets into cells (binding and uptake via a carbohydrate-mediated process) and how it kills them (enzymatic disruption of protein biosynthesis by functional destruction of ribosomal RNA).
 
He got instantly expelled, predictably. I think arrested too. Darwin Award. I think he works at a bank or something now.

Haha, figures.

Some people spend quite some time and effort on these things, for example:

 
I actually worked on way more interesting carbohydrates involved in cell-cell recognition, protein trafficking, that sort of stuff.
But most of those really aren't very sweet. ;)

In my first biotech job, I did work on one of the most truly toxic (on a weight or molar basis) things around -- the Ricinus communis agglutinin (obtained from castor beans) known as ricin. Worked for a company (which ultimately has become quite successful -- although it took 'em a long time) that was making anti-cancer immunocongugates (immunotoxins). We had (from a toxicity standpoint) terrifying amounts of ricin (hundreds of grams) in our manufacturing facility located - no kidding - sharing a warehouse-style building with an MVP Sports store in a little strip mall like place on the Automile (US Route 1) in Norwood, MA. My lab - for about a year of the four years I worked for the company - was there, too.

Fun times.

Ricin is actually really interesting stuff, both in terms of how it targets and gets into cells (binding and uptake via a carbohydrate-mediated process) and how it kills them (enzymatic disruption of protein biosynthesis by functional destruction of ribosomal RNA).
Hey, I’m an infectious diseases specialist and microbiologist, you don’t know from terror until you’ve played in a BSL-3 level micro lab!
 
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