Ganesha
Here I’ve removed the
long hose from the front “snout,” but the effect is
still there. The two largest ports where the x-rays
come in and go out (which above are glass, but
replaced by Beryllium windows) make the eyes. It’s
got ears and a nose, along with a couple of dangling
arms/appendages. In truth it really was not intended
to look like something else. It’s a surface
scattering chamber complete with vacuum hardware and
measurement pieces, an RF induction heating system,
rotating sample stage feedthrough, fine-adjust gas
flow leak-valves, burst-disk, and enough windows that
I can see the sample positions during the experiment.
One of my friends took one look at it and said,
“Ganesh!” The name stuck. So we have
a vacuum chamber named after a Hindu deity.
Stranger things have happened (I recall the
himalayan pray flags that routinely went up during
experiments at one beamline at the ALS), but it is
a little odd to have my surface scattering
experiment refereed to with the proper name of a
god. “How is Ganesha today? Is Ganesha’s pressure
ok? Is Ganesha’s thermocouple measuring the
temperature accurately?”
It turns out that Ganesha the deity is often seen as
a patron of science (among many other things). So
perhaps the little vacuum chamber Ganesha is not
without some obtuse justification beyond mere
appearance. For better or worse, the name has stuck
and I surely hope that it’s not seen as offensive.
One further thought... Most of our samples involve at
least some (if not large) parts made from precious
metals such as gold and platinum. So there have ben
several occasions where such precious metals have
been “offered” to Ganesha. Thankfully he’s always
returned them to us intact.