The Mad Scientist

We often hear tales of the experiments that are conducted by scientists. Behind closed doors, in their laboratories in the depth of night. Bunsen burners heating flasks of overflowing foam as test tubes containing varying concoctions are added. A Van De Graff generator in the background is driving the voltage of a couple of parallel plates to breakdown and sparks fly across them sizzling and piercing the silence. The crazy scientist wearing a well-worn and chemical-stained lab coat looks on with wild scary glazed eyes. Rapidly recording notes into an overstuffed lab book, their hair all standing on end, with a smile reminiscent of Mona Lisa.

However, if you meet Jessica Foley, the Chief Scientific Officer at the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, you will find, on first impression at least, that she does not live up to the caricature at all. She is very engaging and she and her colleagues were very generous with their time as we discussed E&I and where our amplifiers fit into the FUS environment.

Then just as we were about to leave, she said “I must tell you of an experiment that I did with one of your amplifiers, whilst I was at the University of Washington.” (Oh yeah; here we go I thought.) “Late one afternoon” she said “myself and some other researchers locked the door of the lab and using one of your high power amplifiers decided to try some acoustic cooking. We immersed salmon, vegetables and steak into water and then applied several hundred watts of RF power to the transducers and cooked all the food with ultrasonic energy.” She went on to tell us that it all tasted wonderful, though she herself avoided the steak that was well done in the middle and rare on the outside!

So it is true that you never know what crazy scientists will cook up!

Cheers,

Written by Tony Harris, October 5, 2017