What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger

When we mess something up, it's very easy to attribute ourselves with "I'm terrible with this kind of thing". But every mess-up has a lesson to be learnt, if only one would sit and recollect "now, where did I go wrong?"
If you can spot that, next time you are sure to do a better job than the last.

This brings to mind the famous story of Thomas Alva Edison's light bulb. It is said that his attempts to produce a light bulb failed him over a thousand times (I don't know how far the figures are correct, but sure must have been a long 5 years!). He tried with Platinum filaments...doesn't work....Nitrogen gas...doesn't work......
but after each failed attempt he said "I just learnt another way of how you can't make a light bulb!".

So, the best way to learn something is through mistakes, you generally learn more through making mistakes than through getting it right the first time.

So the next time you make a mistake be glad that you did, for 'failures are the pillars to success'

The arcane world of vacuum technology

If you’ve watched the film Matrix, you probably would have got that eerie feeling when you switched off the tv and looked around you, “is this the real world or is there something going on underneath that I’m not aware of”.

I recently read up on ‘vacuum technology’ as part of my work and revisited something close to that weird feeling.

There are so many things that we use in our day-to day lives without realizing the work that lie hidden beneath it.
The technology of vacuum coating is something that goes into your pair of sunglasses, reading glasses, your car windscreen, fluorescent lights, LCD screens on your mobile, calculator, digital watch, computer, CD’s, DVD’s and the small chip on your credit card, magnetic strips on your ATM card and old cassettes, inside all electronics and much much more.

Something as simple as a pair of sunglasses goes through a couple of vacuum chambers (which are deemed of air) to get its UV reflection coating, polarization coating (to reduce the glare) and other coatings that are needed to protect your eyes. Same goes for your laptop screen, car windscreen and shutters (tinted or not) and now that I’ve mentioned it tinted thin film layers etc.

All these fine coatings can’t be done under a normal environment with air and water vapour present for they get in the way of the coating and you get a pretty lousy product.
So what manufacturers do is they put them in a vacuum chamber and evaporate the material that needs to be deposited on it, which then goes and sticks itself onto the product, and since there’s no air, you get a high purity coating. And of course it’s not as simple as it sound, a lot of consideration goes into the process, like maintaining the right temperature, rotating the sample to get a uniform coating, and making sure that the coating thickness (which is generally less than a hundredth of a milli meter) is just right.

This is a technology that is vastly present behind many things that we use everyday, but most of us don’t even know it exist.

Back with a few changes

A vacation has to be a vacation so didn't even open my blog when I was in Sri Lanka.
Now Back at work not much time to blog.

:)