Cal Tech glassblower's retirement leaves scientists in the lurch

[Recursion]

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-caltech-glassblower-20160613-snap-story.html

Hunkered down in the sub-basement of the Norman W. Church Laboratory for Chemical Biology, underneath a campus humming with quantum teleportation devices, gravity wave detectors and neural prosthetics, Rick Gerhart chipped away at a broken flask.

Blowtorch in hand, he pulled the softened glass apart like taffy, tweezing out glass shards with a flick of his wrist. Peering into the dancing flames, he examined his work for wrinkles — imperfections invisible to the untrained eye.

“It not only should be functional,” he said, smoothing the rim with a carbon rod, “it has to look good.”

Here in Caltech’s one-man glass shop, where Gerhart transforms a researcher’s doodles into intricate laboratory equipment, craftsmanship is king. No two pieces of scientific glassware are the same, and for more than two decades, students and Nobel laureates alike have begun each project with Gerhart’s blessing that, yes, he can create the tools to make their experiments possible.

Interesting piece

[JonLeibowitz]

1. This guy is really fun to talk to. He is a part of history

It is like interrogating a history book

[Warpy]

2. I wonder if he has a counterpart at MIT

I think he must have, although I never met one when I worked there.

I remember my old Gilbert chemistry set and the biology set that followed it the next year, both had ample supplies of glass tubing and instructions on how to make various items needed in the experiments. Working with glass was great fun, especially looking at my mother's expression as she waited for me to catch my room on fire.

[JonLeibowitz]

3. I think they must have one too. Perhaps we will be stealing them from MIT soon.

[Warpy]

6. Either that or somebody failing calculus will realize engineering isn't in the cards

and apprentice to one of these guys. Glass blowing isn't a lost art, I've known a couple of modern artists working in glass, but it's definitely a threatened one, especially when it's specialty glass for scientific uses.

[Recursion]

7. A friend of mine in undergrad did that with woodworking

He wasn't enjoying college, at all, and had a student job in the wood shop which he realized he liked a lot more. I think he's still there 20 years later.

[Aerows]

16. Calculus is the only reason

I have a shred of respect for modern mathematics.

Algebra makes no sense whatsoever until it is paired with physics, and calculus is the foundation of physics.

[Recursion]

19. And don't get me started on how backwards it is to teach trig before calculus

It's almost perverse.

cosine is the basis solution to y'' + y = 0. That's what makes sense. Introducing it via the fairly trivial application of ratios of sides in a right triangle is awful, and sadly trig is often the last math many students in the US get.

[Aerows]

20. Agreed!

I've always been puzzled at how math has been taught. Calculus should absolutely be taught before trigonometry because it explains the reason you took algebra in the first place!

I was knee deep in physics before I realized the value of trigonometry, and even then, I found it to be sketchy.

90% of trigonometry is mental masturbation. Practically, it is about as valuable as peeing in the road - that was my experience.

Didn't necessarily mean to go there, but Trig is pretty worthless. Geometry? HIGHLY useful. Calculus? HIGHLY useful. Trigonometry? If I wanted to float on a daisy strewn path of theory, okay, it might be worthwhile. For somebody. For some endeavor. I guess.

[Aerows]

4. A worker uses tools.

An engineer makes their own.

[Recursion]

8. But as the article points out, the opportunities to learn to make high-quality tools are small

Because nobody's willing to pay for it anymore except for a few select institutions. For most people prefab is "good enough". Worse is better, as we say in the UNIX world...

[Electric Monk]

9. 3D printing to the rescue?

[Recursion]

10. Maybe? Or does that end craftsmanship for good?

I mean, maybe in 30 years the old codgers will be people like me who still use CAD software rather than letting the computer design the PCB for you? (Actually that's kind of happening right now.)

[Aerows]

13. Can't speak to that

I am a github type of girl and if there is a tool that is necessary, I'll make it.

I'm not very good at standing around wondering. I'm more of a oh, it needs to be done let's do it sort of person.

[madamesilverspurs]

5. Way back in '67

I went to work for one of those guys. Aside from his lab work he had a small glass shop, producing all the fun swans and unicorns and wishing wells that are ubiquitous in such shops. He taught me the basics and I worked at it for thirty years, a very satisfying trade for a creative impulse. Had to give it up in '01 after an illness left me with diminished feeling in my hands. I still miss it.

Thanks for posting this, it brought back many good memories!

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. I remember when glass swans and unicorns were in fashion. I had a glass something or other

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. I wonder how many crack pipe makers have thought, "I could do that."

[Aerows]

15. Well gee, you just went into a pleasant place

So glad that smoking crack is the first thing that crosses your mind when people are discussing hardware.

Let me put my soldering iron away, leave the PCB to sit without traces, because it has to be about drugs.

I'm so sick of drugs and the lives they destroy that it isn't even funny.

And I just went off on a rant.

Didn't mean to get zealous and fervent about it.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. Actually, the first thing that crossed my mind was the Dr. Jekyll lab in Penny Dreadful....

Love a glass condenser.

[Aerows]

18. I'm having issues with family

I didn't mean to leap all over you, it just hit too closely and my sense flew out of the window.

[jtuck004]

14. While I realize this is scientific" glass, I would bet that any of scores of really

good glassblowers among the headshops - that is out of hundreds, because they aren't all that good - could fill in for that position.

Some of them live and breathe that craft - but the weed and concentrate market has proven just too lucrative - on that thought, I wonder if the University might have to pay more than they are now.

An acquaintance, who runs other businesses, just opened a new glass pipe shop in Spokane a few months ago. He seems pleased with the business it is generating as its own store already.