now picnic

This should probably seem normal to me by now, but I still love getting emails to the whole physics department like the one below:

Hi, all

Sorry for the mass email. I wonder if anyone in the department has a Keithley 642, or a
similar multimeter, with charge measurement sensitivity up to the fC range? We need it for
electron measurement by charge integration, and would greatly appreciate it if we can
borrow it for a couple of days.

Thanks.

Oh, sure. I've got one here in my pocket.

I also get great technical spam from time to time:

Do you ever need to pump small amounts of liquid at constant rates? Or in irregular intervals? Or
at increasing or decreasing speeds? Over extended times up to weeks? Or do you ever wish you could mix two different liquids at any (changing) ratio over extended times? Do you use solenoid driven pumps for such applications? Or do you need to switch liquid flows at irregular intervals with solenoid driven (micro)valves of 12 to 24 V?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you might be interested in our programmable
DualPump system.

Then there are the course descriptions:

Superunification of all the fundamental interactions underwent a major paradigm shift in 1984 when eleven-dimensional supergravity was knocked off its pedestal by ten-dimensional superstrings. 1995 witnessed a new shift of equal proportions: perturbative ten-dimensional superstrings were in their turn superseded by a new non-perturbative theory called M-theory which describes supermembranes and superfivebranes, which subsumes all five consistent string theories and whose low energy limit is, ironically, eleven-dimensional supergravity. The course will provide an elementary introduction. Evaluation will be based on homeworks. No required textbook; recommended texts and more information may be found on the website.

Ah, yes, superfivebranes. Even if you know what's going on there (and I would argue that few people do...) you have to step back and look at how crazy that all looks. (Bonus points if you use of the word "ironically" makes you smile.) I also like that sentence at the end: "The course will provide an elementary introduction."

And let's not forget the wacky physics sites out there, like the oldy-but-goody
Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics (like the photo above)