5th of July

Last night I was treated to a plasma show that far eclipsed the the pyrotechnics of the night before (see 4th of July post). I was out walking around the campus at around sunset last night and the horizon began getting very dark... in the direction the sun should have been setting. By the time I got back to my room it was dark, the wind was gusting at probably 40 mph, and there were almost constant lightning flashes on two sides, although the rain had not hit. We're talking flashes every second or so... enough to make a celebrity jealous.

I went on up to my partially covered balcony (which again conveniently faced the right direction), grabbed my camera, and watched the show. It went on for probably an hour, with lighting literally all around, even bolts stretching across the sky overhead. One thunderclap was intense enough that it felt like someone actually pushed me back a little. I don't think I have ever experienced such an intense lightning storm, and the sheer energy of it was amazing.

Lightning show from my balcony (fully nighttime)

This morning it was bright and sunny again. I went on a factory tour (with my lab) of PI, the world leader in micro and nano postioning devices, piezo motors and several other things. They had a very nice facility near Karlsruhe [Here - so new its just just a vacant lot in the satellite image], about a 45 minute drive away. They had some very nice demos set up and it was very informative. Even though all the speaking was in German, a couple of the powerpoint presentations and all the posters were in English, because they had been used at conferences. They design and manufacture everything from motors as small as 3mm in diameter to 6-axis positioning stages a couple feet high. Overall, I was able to figure out most of what was going on, so that made things much more interesting.