OK, following up on my earlier post, I thought I would share a previously untold-online story (one of many). I will tell part of the story. Can you solve the mystery?

While I was a working at a major physics lab in the late 1980s, I was on assignment to a fabulous and very beautiful electro-optics lab. There were light tables and experiments everywhere. It was like a dream and I was a kid in a candy store, full of energy and math

One of the experiments had been abandoned.

Bolted on the light table was a metal box with a jig inside to hold optimal material. There was a detector in the box (behind the jig) and an input port for a laser beam.

In a nutshell, the experiment as designed to test the optimal properties of certain substances, including dn/dT where W was the one optical property and T was temperature. So basically the PhDs heated the box (and the optical material) and, using a helium-neon laser, measured the dn/dT (I don't remember the exact symbols, but it does not matter.)

The problem was that, previously, the "gurus" could not get a baseline measured and recorded. When they heated the box with no optical material in the test jig, they got crazy readings, up and down. They could not explain it. The experiment was abandoned.

Along comes unpolitic neo out of the university, hanging out every night in the optics lab, playing with all the abandoned experiments

One night, I was doing what I used to like to do. I had the experiment running, lights off, feet up on the desk, eating pizza, drinking mountain dew, and watching the test data on the screen. I was on the phone talking to a very hot girl, working hard of course, on a date All of a sudden the measurements on the screen started going up... without any changes to the box! I was not even applying any heat from the test jig!!

Later, they stabilized and then started to go down... without any heat applied using the test configuration.

Well, being a good lab rat, I told the very hot girl on the phone I had some important detective work to do, and watched the data, in total darkness, except for the lights of lasers, on/off switches, dials and monitors.

The only sound in the lab was the sound of equipment running, fans, motors, etc.

After about an hour, I found the problem. Solved forever. The mystery revealed. The mystery that even the most senior PhDs could not solve. I wrote a paper on the problem that evening and recorded it in the lab reports archives forever the next day (not very politically correct at the time!)

Can you guess what the problem was? Or, do you need more hints?

Two things come immediately to mind.

1. Ambient heat source with you as the source, crossing a thermal contamination threshold ( given the type of conversation )

2. Vibration ( voice or movement) which I would expect to be worse without the extra weight of the optical material.

Wow! Congrats! And without even any hints!

OK,.... the rest of the story....

So, after a while, I heard a "click" and later on, noticed the measurements started to reverse course, going up. But it did not dawn on me as significant. Then, later on, I heard another "click" and the measurements reversed itself again (with some delay). The click was just barely noticeable above the noise of the fan motors of all the gear in the lab.

The clicks I heard were from the .......... ??? (Fill in the blank and finish the mystery!).

Ok, to be fair I had an unfair advantage given the subject matter. I grew up around this type of stuff. As a quick example of what I mean, my father is one of the authors listed here (you'll be able to pick the name out from the list Neo) and I am only too well aware of the sensitivity of optical equipment.

I'd guess it was the phone receiver/ receiver switch, but that's a more difficult one to be so sure about.

Like Father - Like Son! Thanks for sharing that paper and extra knowledge.

Back to our "Neo the Lab Rat" mystery number 1:

No, it was not the click of the telephone.

Hint: I later noticed the box that was constructed to house the experiment was made of aluminium ......

The "clicks" I kept hearing that corresponded (with slight delay) to the basement measurements changing course in an empty test jig was the .................. ?

Am scared looking at this post, I don't have a clue what is this about .. I should refresh my physics basics ...

Don't hang up on the girl in order to figure out why an experiment doesn't work because that's not the way to get her to go out with you