Educating Students Around the World in Materials Analysis and Characterization

In addition to my writings on this blog, I have written most of the website content for my materials analysis laboratory, Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc.  That website consists of nearly 80 pages of information about the laboratory, materials analysis techniques, applications of materials characterization to a wide range of materials to make better use of materials and better products, information about the industries, companies, universities, and governmental agencies we support, and background and specialization information about our scientists.

AME's Dr. Kevin Wepasnick is a home brew-master. He recently collaborated with C&EN, a publication of the American Chemical Society, to make a helium beer. Helium actually is soluble in beer, gives it a very fine head, and maintains a very rich and creamy taste. But it has a much lower solubility than carbon dioxide does and does not create the carbonic acid that CO2 does. Carbonic acid gives beer a sharper taste.  Consequently, helium beer is quite flat.  Because the solubility of helium is very low, Kevin used a much higher pressure of helium in the brewing process. Due to that high pressure, much of the brewing was performed in our laboratory at Anderson Materials Evaluation using higher pressure hardware than is used for the usual carbon dioxide beer. See the C&EN video at www.andersonmaterials.com/beer.  Note the remark that our AME logo is Tight!

An incredible number of students are coming to our website to learn about analytical techniques and materials characterization. In just the last week, about 100 university internet users came to our website. Visitors came from Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, the Universities of Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Wisconsin, Colorado, Ohio State, Texas Tech, Virginia Tech, Cal Poly, UCLA, UC at Davis, Oregon State, Michigan State, U. of Rochester, RIT, Case Western Reserve U., Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Kent State, SUNY at Potsdam, Lehigh, Arizona State, Missouri U. of Sci. & Tech., Carnegie Mellon, U. of Pittsburgh, Northeastern U., UMBC, George Mason U., Purdue U., Washington State, and many more have visited in the last week.  Visitors from McGill, U. of Toronto, U. of Alberta, U. of Calgary, and other colleges in Canada visited the AME website.

In the United Kingdom, Oxford, Cambridge, and the Universities of Strathclyde, Sheffield, Southhampton, Northhampton, Windsor, Reading, Bath, Leeds, and Birmingham have provided visitors. In the rest of Europe: Uppsala U., Ecole de technologie superieure, U. of Ulm, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz U. Hannover, Picardie U., U. of Mons, Flinders U., U. College of Dublin, Waterloo U., U. Libre de Bruxelles, and others have visited. Many South American, Middle Eastern, African, Indian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese university visitors have also been to our website in the last week. AME is certainly doing its part to educate the world in materials science and engineering!