Translation stage: check

 Good news on the lab front: we now have a motorized translation stage. This is slightly less imperative now that we have a functioning shutter fast enough (hopefully) to let only a single pulse pass, but it should still make life a little easier. The next hurdle is getting beam time and finding out just how good the beam looks and how fast our shutter actually is. If it's not fast enough, we might have to just take Rod's suggestion and use it to dice carrots.

 I attempted cleaning some of the Japanese coins Bianca purchased using two very scientific methods:

1. Toothbrush and soapy water 

2. Q-tip and soapy water

 Neither of which worked particularly well. I currently have two coins soaking in soapy water in cups on my desk. Bianca also suggested methanol, which I went to get, but the lab workers were very hesitant to let me have any (saying "it's toxic" about 10 times. Yes, I know, I promise I won't drink it or let it touch my hands/skin) so I didn't get very much to the point that by the time I got back to the office there was very little I could do with it.

Speaking of the coins:

The resolution is a little cruddy because I took the shots with my laptop's camera, but in any case these are the first photos on this blog of anything directly (physically) related to my experiment. The characters on the coin (read NSEW) are:

寛永通寳

かんえいつうほう (Kanei Tsuuhou; the correct pronunciation of the first word would be something like kan'ei where the n is a syllable by itself)

Kanei was an Era in Japanese history from 1624-1643. Japanese history is broken into "eras" corresponding to the different emperors, for instance, this current year is Heisei 22 since the emperor ascended the throne in January 1989. For more info click here.

Despite the coin being labeled as such, such coins were minted into the 19th century. All the searches I've done for 寳 seem to indicate that the character is slightly outdated and is more typically written as 宝　(treasure) with the same pronunciation. The one on the right means "street" or "way" but as a verb it can also mean something to the effect of diffuse/circulate. So the coin basically says "Kanei Era circulating treasure." Appropriate enough for money. The ones we have were minted in the 1760s. The value on the coin is 4 mon, which wasn't very much.

 I've been looking for a good source for the metallurgical content of the coin and I haven't been able to find much in English, and my Japanese language skill is not up to par with reading metallurgical articles in Japanese without the aid of a Kanji dictionary, which I left at home because it weighs about 5 lbs. The best I have been able to find thus far is this abstract.

Google scholar, UMich and Rochester's databases have turned up nothing on this journal. I may send a very polite email to the corresponding society.

And ask very politely if they have old journals available online somewhere.

Fun fact: the Japanese write "copper" as either 銅 (meaning "same as gold") or 赤金 (meaning "red gold"). The latter is slightly archaic, and stems from a very early period in Chinese history when gold, silver, and copper were all considered gold. "red" was used when the materials needed to be distinguished; silver was "white" and gold was "yellow". The first character was more recent, although by no means modern, and was based on the notion that gold and copper shine in the same manner.

I also read an article on the laser cleaning of wall paintings, but there are some very nice charts in there which are probably going to require a post in and of themselves.