The man looked up from his work. "Hi, Jake," he said. "I might get somewhere if this oscillator would stop wandering all over the place. This thing doesn't seem to be very accurate at high frequencies." He indicated a piece of equipment connected to the oscilloscope.
"I'll sure be glad when we get a good physical chemist to do this work. My business is ceramics, and I'm getting sick and tired of wrestling with his wiring."
"Well," said Darcy, "you won't have to worry about this any more. This is Roger Lorin, our new physical chemist. Roger, this is Philip Gordon, our ceramics expert."
Gordon grinned and extended his hand. "I'm glad to meet you," he said. "Sorry I blew off like that. I just get disgusted sometimes."
"It does get frustrating," Roger agreed as they shook hands. "Electronics is rather tricky."
"You're right there," replied Gordon. "Especially when you don't know too much about it. What I learned about electronics in college has long since departed. Take a look at this set up. It's about as poor a job of haywiring as you'll find anywhere."
"I see you're using high frequency excitation to get your high temperatures," Roger commented. "Just what compounds are you working with?"
"I've been working with some plastics, inert stuff, to see just what they'll react with, and how fast they'll react at high temperatures."
"It isn't too easy," Lorin said. "It never has been easy to find reaction rates. I'll get to work on these this afternoon. Maybe I can get some of these finished tomorrow or the next day."
"Thanks," Gordon said in a relieved voice. "It'll be good to get some results I can rely on."