
Fermilab used aspirin to detect water leaks in their rings (1979) [pdf] - sohkamyung
http://history.fnal.gov/criers/FN_1979_04_26.PDF
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Beanus
I work at Fermilab. This is still a thing. In fact it is getting difficult to
find the uncoated aspirin that dissolves in the same way it did back on the
day.

~~~
keldaris
If the originals were uncoated, shouldn't it be very easy to just make your
own and make sure it dissolves at exactly the rate you need?

Regardless, always nice to see people using creative low tech solutions to
serious problems.

~~~
Beanus
I'm sure a new solution will be adopted some day. The aspirin is likely just a
novel cheap and, at the time, easily available solution. Possibly we won't
need them in the future because we'll accelerate beam with superconducting rf
cavities. Check out the PIP2 project [https://pip2.fnal.gov/how-
works.html](https://pip2.fnal.gov/how-works.html)

~~~
busterarm
Wouldn't it be simple (if a little laborious) to crush up the coated aspirin
and then use a pill press to make new pills?

~~~
peterwwillis
You can also just scrape the coating off with a knife or rasp/file.

~~~
ConcernedCoder
FYI: I'm willing to do the scraping, just so I can say I work at Fermilab :)

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danielvf
A friend of mine used to work on US Airforce C-5 Galaxies - the second largest
aircraft in the world.

When hunting for pressurization leaks in the cavernous aircraft, they would
throw toilet paper rolls into the air, and look for the direction that the
streaming toilet paper was sucked.

Once they threw a toilet paper roll, and it was sucked out of the aircraft so
quickly that they didn't spot the "leak" location. So they got a blanket,
throw that up, and it was gone too...

~~~
dogma1138
Was that leak an open cargo door? It doesn’t seems likely that the aircraft
would be able to keep the cabin pressurized if there is a “leak” large enough
to suck out a blanket.

~~~
danielvf
Testing was conducted on the ground, engines near full power, shoving air into
the cargo compartment via bleed air.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_air)

In this particular case, the "leak" was somewhere in the roof of the aircraft.
My friend was laughing about how confused everyone else on the base would have
been by seeing a blanket shooting out of the top of the Galaxy.

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bcatanzaro
Fun!

My uncle engineers water reservoirs and a few months ago he took me on a tour
of a 45 MegaLiter concrete subterranean reservoir he had engineered. They were
in the process of fixing a leak they discovered - using Kool-aid.

After discovering the leak, they gave a scuba diver a flashlight and a plastic
bottle filled with bright red Kool-aid powder. The diver squirted the powder
at various places around the reservoir and paid attention to where the red dye
went, which found the leaks.

~~~
lsaferite
I've used red food dye to detect toilet leaks several times in my life. Very
useful stuff.

~~~
Kirth
That will give the successor to your plumbing a good scare in a few decades
;).

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kazinator
The aspirin is irrelevant; this worked thanks to the other ingredients making
up the bulk of the pill, like powdered cellulose or whatever.

We could conduct a double-blind experiment with a placebo; it would still
work. :)

~~~
cwkoss
Be sure the Booster rings don't guess your experiment and bias the results!

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JorgeGT
We regularly use Johnson's baby oil for Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) at
my lab, it's cheap ans smells nice. Similarly I once was visiting a certain
aerospace institution and they were using Durex gel for assembling a drone...

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jhpauley
I'm also impressed at the effort put into the newsletter.. (printed by the GPO
weekly it would appear).

Can't stay for long... I gotta run off to the Z-80 'Brown Bagger'.

~~~
moftz
I wonder if they still meet

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InclinedPlane
Another interesting related story (with a less happy ending):
[http://www.businessinsider.com/kitty-litter-nuclear-waste-
ac...](http://www.businessinsider.com/kitty-litter-nuclear-waste-
accident-2016-8)

