Weekend Review: Lichtenberg Figure, A (White!) Snowshoe Hare, & DQ

Yikes, I've gone too long without posting! I've had some long (but really great!) days at work this week, mostly helping with filming a resident Christmas skit (for Christmas rounds next week), making a small cell lung cancer presentation for noon rounds, and seeing a few patients somewhere in there too (actually, we ended up having quite a few consults this week!). The weather's too warm for my winter jacket (imagine that) and I only have eight days of work left before the holidays, so there's a lot to be happy about -- here are a few other things that I've enjoyed this past week:

1. Christmas decor -- The cancer centre really goes all out with Christmas decorating -- garland, trees, and poinsettias everywhere! Next door, the heating plant lights its steam towers in changing coloured lights.

   

   multipurpose trees: looking festive and collecting clothing items for charity

   

   lighted heating plant towers

2. Lichtenberg Figure -- Outside the medical physics department in the cancer centre is a plexiglass block containing a Lichtenberg figure, or electron tree -- basically the coolest thing ever. It was created by injecting a 6 MeV Linac electron beam into the plexiglass block. As plexiglass is a good insulator, the electrons became temporarily trapped in the block, building up negative charge and effective voltage to a level (1.6 million volts!) that exceeded the dielectric strength of the plexiglass. At this point some electrically stressed areas in the plexiglass insulator suddenly began to conduct -- a process called dielectric breakdown -- creating dendritic channels through which the trapped charge suddenly rushed out like a miniature lightning flash. The result makes for beautiful art!

   

   Lichtenberg Figure

3. peanut butter cookies & juice boxes -- We can count on having The Best peanut butter cookies and juice boxes every Friday afternoon at our academic half day. Yes, juice boxes. They're not just for five year olds.

   

   Friday afternoon juice boxes and peanut butter cookies

4. snowshoe hare -- Last week I wrote about seeing my first white snowshoe hare -- now the tally's two, with photo evidence. This one was sitting right in my path when I went to check out the lights at the Alberta Legislature.

   

   summer showshoe hare

   

   winter (camouflaged!) snowshoe hare

5. DQ -- We took a break during Christmas movie making for DQ blizzards...in a very deserted DQ (guess other people don't have ice cream for dinner when it's below zero out...definitely their loss).

   

   my chocolate chip cookie dough blizzard (700-something Cal and 13 g protein...so a reasonable dinner)

What did you enjoy this week?