PrincetonUniversity
Photograph by Denise
Applewhite
"These guys are aces" One Wednesday afternoon in
February, the folks down at NASA were having trouble. For
months Princeton physicists had been working with NASA
engineers to prepare for the launch of a satellite. Delicate
instruments, designed to probe for the faintest echoes of
the Big Bang, were in their final round of tests.
Suddenly it became clear that one part of
the assembly was running too warm compared to the rest. The
offending part was buried so deep in the instrument that no
one could see it. The scientists decided they could use
mirrors and small tools to thread a copper strap into a
cavity where it would siphon away heat. The strap would need
to be perfect -- thick enough to carry the heat but flexible
in just the right places.
The question was: Who could make the
strap, make it perfect and make it now? For all involved,
there was only one answer: the Princeton Physics Department
machine shop.
The sureness of that answer is one of the
hidden stories of the Physics Department and something that
faculty members say they rely upon to maintain their place
at the cutting edge of science. As David Wilkinson, Cyrus
Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, summed it up: "These
guys are aces."
• Department of Physics home page