00:11
Then, we did it again. We wanted to be intentionally light-hearted.
We did, yes.
And we're kind of getting into this depth of...
I brought up money. I definitely brought up money on top of building philosophy.
If you put philosophy and money together, that's not very light-hearted.
That's a heavy-ass topic.
Yeah, that would be a good way to put it.
But yeah, I don't know.
After recording that one-hour episode of lots of thoughts packed in there,
I was telling Len, before we started this recording,
like, let's keep it light. Let's keep it silly, whatever.
And it looks like we cannot be silly for too long. We're very boring people.
It just because it's not silly and light-hearted doesn't mean it's not boring.
Wait, how was I going to end that phrase? I don't know.
Maybe it's boring. Maybe it's not. The listeners will tell us.
So at the end of last episode, we started talking about building things
and how sort of the stakes of the building project kind of increased throughout.
But it all started with very simple desire of maybe wanting a new toy
that you didn't immediately have access to.
And kids are full of this creativity.
And they come up with pretty amazing ideas now that I think about it.
So it's amazing what you can do even from that early age.
And I think building stuff like that, what it really is amazing about is like,
you have practice to do a lot of low-stake failures, right?
Like, it's not the end of the world if like your cards,
your handmade cards didn't turn out great.
Or like your handmade Game Boy was not the same as the real Game Boy.
Yeah, somehow it had a brighter screen than the real anyway.
Then you like set out to draw something.
You know, you wanted to draw a scene of, I don't know, picnic.
And in your head, it looked great.
And on the paper, it didn't.
Things like that.
And those are like, you might feel good or bad about it,
or you don't feel anything about it as a five-year-old.
But these are good place to practice low-stake failures that's like
critical for any sort of building type project, right?
03:03
And I think these like middle school, high school robotics class are a good,
or like any, I don't know, it's like,
it's one of the few opportunities to interact with electronics, I feel, in a fun way.
I had to learn the righty-tighty-lefty-loosey rule when I came to grad school.
I never had the like helping my dad in a garage experience.
I didn't have that.
So like, I didn't even know that.
So I'm pretty proud of being able to generate fourth harmonic.
Oh, you absolutely should be, yeah.
But research is like not that far-fetched from these arts and crafts.
That you do when you're younger, you know.
Sure, like stakes are higher, budgets are higher.
You may be working, you may be responsible for a team of people.
But, and maybe the outcome of it is very important and not just like your own satisfaction.
But I feel like the thought process is still very similar.
You imagine what you want to build.
You let your imagination run wild.
You're like, maybe I could do this, maybe I could do that.
But except in scientific research, it's like magic, but it's real.
Guys, guys, it's real magic, wait.
Like, it's like your imagination can turn into real instruments.
Because laws of physics, man.
Because laws of physics, man.
Makes it really sound like we're talking about a different type of magic here, Asami.
Anyway, have you ever seen Spongebob?
Imagination.
There's a whole meme you can find about this.
It doesn't have to do with the same thing, but they're related.
But I hear what you're saying.
I really do feel that way.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I can tell that you feel that way.
There's an impassioned response coming from you about this.
Like, it becomes, there's a wonder there, I think, that you're describing, right?
You're like, wow, that's just so cool.
That this is something that can be done.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and like, I mean, unfortunately, in my case, I got to build it,
but never actually got to do the research with it.
So yeah, fair enough.
Maybe one will look at it as a failure, right?
But for me, it was a pretty empowering experience.
06:05
Like knowing that I can design this stuff from scratch.
It was all pen and pencil with my measuring tape.
Hovering over a giant laser table.
And you know, does this make sense?
Will this fit?
You know, and the optical table real estate was limited.
Yeah, I remember you talking about that.
So those are expensive tables.
So these are expensive tables.
There are already other things in it, on it.
And I had to finagle my way to set my setup, couple it nicely to the existing system.
And I'm kind of glad that my PI just let me do that.
Because I was like, you know what, Peter?
It would be really nice if we had a 200 nanometer light to pump instead of probe.
And he's like, you could make one.
You know, instead of like, let's think about this different project, right?
He's like, you could make one.
Kind of sent me off to this pathway.
And you know, it's nice to know that it's robust enough that my former lab mates want to use it.
And now there might actually come a research with it.
Because, you know, I did the building part, and she didn't have to do it.
So she has time to do the research.
And I do feel like, you know, it's hard to get this kind of gratifying experience.
It was not instant, but it was still gratifying.
There's fewer chances of those happening as you grow older.
Because you tend to look for efficient solutions, which tend to be ready-made solutions.
Or maybe you're involved in such a big scale project to the point that your own contribution
is like tiny, tiny, tiny.
I feel like it would be different if I was involved in, I don't know, James Webb telescope
project.
I built that one hinge that went on to the James Webb telescope.
Still extremely proud of myself, probably.
Yeah, as you should be.
Compared to the entire thing, pretty minuscule.
Look, if that hinge wasn't there, though, then it would come apart.
The whole thing would fall apart.
That, yes, you've just made a really cool point about, sort of by saying, right, that
sometimes in larger ways, in larger projects, and as we do more things, right, there's maybe
09:04
two pieces here.
But the first one that I would focus on is the, it's hard to see what contribution you're
having, because you just mentioned maybe as an example, right, a fake situation of
maybe you made the one hinge on like a space Webb telescope.
And it sounds, maybe to most, right, because there isn't context there, kind of simple,
right?
It sounds, and maybe it actually was, right?
But it, it sounds simple, because well, we know what a hinge is.
Like, it's a hinge, I could make a hinge, I could put two pieces of paper together and
some tape and like, that's a hinge, you know, like, but, but that reduces what it probably
had an impact of, right?
Like the, the actual impact becomes hard to see from everyone else.
But it also can be hard to see from your own position, where you're like, I did this thing.
But maybe you're not sure how it plays a role, you have a higher chance of knowing how it
plays a role.
But yeah.
There's a beauty in being part of that kind of gigantic project that you can never do
on your own, right?
It's really fun, like, you know, a lot of the beam time experiments that I did in grad
school, has like 3040 people on the author list regularly.
And I, you know, I'm like a 17th author in it or something.
I feel like I keep going back to this point.
But like, research is a lot of these arts and crafts spirits of like testing out, seeing
what works, oh, this doesn't, or like, I can make this better, or like, I can make it cooler.
You know, that, that's, that's the same kind of drive that I had when I was, you know,
making makeshift toys for myself.
And I feel I really don't feel like it's that farfetched.
And so people should do research.
It's fun.
Oh, man, is that the is that the closing message?
No, no, it's not the closing message.
I mean, I not not gonna try and brainwash anybody.
It's not.
It's not fun, most of the time, just by the way.
Most of the time, it doesn't work.
You have to be really comfortable with it.
Yes.
I appreciate your caveats there.
The...
But when it does?
Yeah.
I think if we generalize it a little, it comes across as because you're what you're saying,
I think is really impactful, right?
It's it's saying that taking a project taking something that you can put a part of yourself
12:03
in a way that it could make an impact, like, hopefully a positive one, and that you
probably get some feedback is like how wonderful that is.
But, but the process...
Or how it could be better.
Yeah.
Right.
So like, if you if you go undergo these types of things,
and it doesn't have to be in research, but just just playing, because you connected this.
Yeah.
It gives you more options when you encounter different types of problems.
Yeah.
I bet when I break my laptop, I would just take it to the electronics shop.
But you can be like, oh, I knew that this was gonna like the fan was making a funky noise,
or like, you know, things like that.
And you can kind of do something a little bit more before you take it to the electronic shops.
Yeah.
And yeah, I mean, that's the difference, right?
That's I, I'm glad that you find that in research.
I think that is certainly a piece that can exist in research.
And I mean, I've, yeah, you know, I mean, that's not the only thing.
Yeah, I've had a lot more unpleasant things.
I've had varied experiences, right?
Like, and, and I've both had what you're describing.
But I think what you have had feels like it was a much more sort of satisfying overall experience,
which keeps you sort of within that, within that.
Yeah, yeah.
I think thanks mostly to the people who did this with me.
Yeah.
Not just the guiding PI, but also, you know, the fellow lab mates who like, watch me struggle
day in day out.
So that like that, that definitely helps.
But yeah, I don't know.
It's, I just realized how uncommon that was like this enjoyment of building stuff.
It's like, maybe it's a lot less common than I think it is.
A lot of people in my field, in my current field, prefer to use commercial instruments.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's so much more expensive.
I think with the people you're mentioning who are like, I, why don't we just get this
piece of equipment, right?
There's a prioritization of doing it, playing with the thing, trying to play with it to
get all these.
The balance doesn't work out right there.
And not to say that anybody is weighing these consciously.
Humans are complicated creatures, and they do not act like a seesaw or.
Yeah, yeah, the motive is never.
Yeah, yeah.
But like, having to know that there's like a general barrier to that versus saying, but
15:00
the process that I'm accustomed to in this setting is get the device so that we can execute
the plan and I can gain what I'm like trying to look for here.
Right?
Yeah, like maybe maybe your point, like in your project, the point is not the building
part and point is like what you get out of this instrument.
Exactly.
And maybe you want to spend more resources on that.
Yep.
Then that's a fair, fair, you know, division of labor, right?
And yeah.
So play, explore, try new things, go, go try something new and go play, go play.
It's like, you know, the parents yelling at the kids to go outside and play or something.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
