Count your words.

Today I discovered that some Perl scripts associated with LaTeX are automatically installed by MikTeX as needed. I just typed in 'texcount' to see if it was installed, and MikTeX automatically downloaded the package.

Zoomable.

Today I discovered that my editor (Texclipse) can zoom using the "+" and "-" keys on the keyboard. I had to make this discovery because I accidentally zoomed out so much that I struggled to read the text on the screen.

Texclipse is a wonderful tool for producing LaTeX documents.

Potent solvent

Today I discovered that n-butanol can dissolve our chemical-resistant plastic floors.

Stoichiometry

This Saturday I worked on an interesting stoichiometry problem:

How much coolant solution do I need to remove, if I want to replace the same volume of coolant with pure solute to arrive at a specified coolant concentration with the original volume.

It's solution involved simultaneous equations.

I found a plausible solution. Yay!

When I got to the lab today, and measured the actual concentration, it's about 1%. For the precision that I need I might as well just assume that the current concentration is zero and work from there. Simple arithmetic will do the job. As usual.

Cyanoarcrylate

Today I discovered that it's not a good idea to blow liquid superglue out of small holes. It might splatter onto one's face.

Intermittent

Today I discovered that an intermittent short circuit can look a lot like an intermittent open circuit. The difference is that an intermittent open circuit will not burn out components.

Sparks = damage.

Today I discovered why short-circuiting the input side of the robust LM7812 voltage regulator will destroy it.

I've had train wrecks of series of regulators dying from a single short-circuit on the input side of things. This was most unexpected. The cause is the capacitor on the output side trying to push power backward through the regulator. It can be prevented by connecting a diode across the input and output.