facilities

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by Stonefan5271138

A physics lab isn't all that bad.

That's because you haven't seen our lab. The wing that we get to work in is below ground level. There's an patio-like area outside that we can use, but I don't like it because it's not level (for drainage reasons). We try not to take anything upstairs because we have to haul it up the stairs. As far as I know, we haven't been given an elavator key. The tables in the lab are also horrible. They're hexagonal with a raised island in the center of each of them. Each side is about 3'. The island leaves about 15" of workspace around the tables' perimeters. It's impossible to put a large flat sheet of anything on the tables. However, the island does make a nice space to get things out of the way. The stange shape also makes it hard to clamp down things to be worked on (no right angles to hang things off of). There also aren't any windows in the lab or in the rooms that we usually occupy. During build period, we get there in the morning and resurface at night. Do you know what it's like to only see 6 hours of sunlight in 3 days? I do...

The wing was one of the last parts of a 30? year plan to remodel the school. It was finished the year before the team started. This last phase created 4 new buildings (and replaced one). We don't have much hope for new buildings or major renovations any time soon. It's just that the school wasn't prepared for anything like this. Had we been around 5 years ago, things might be different, however. It doesn't look like the school ever planned to have an engineering or technology program. However, we did find some ancient electronics from the 60's or 70's in the closet. That would seem to imply that such a program existed at some time.

Overall, I guess that it's not that bad, but I don't think we have much room for growth. We've only been around for 3 years, but I think we're already starting to push our limits. We've been able to make due with what we have and have learned to work around some of the problems. But, we might be in trouble if we can't find a way to get some growing room.