Characterize (kar'ik-tər-īz'), v.t. [CHARACTERIZED (-īzd'), CHARACTERIZING], [LL. characterizare; Gr. charactērizein; see CHARACTER], 1. to describe the particular qualities, features, or traits of. 2. to be the distinctive character of; mark: as, a miser is characterized by greed. 3. to give character to.
That brief sally aside, essentially what we did today was to characterize objects. I came in to the lab, put my stuff away, grabbed a chair and turned on my equipment - oscilloscopes and frequency generators. Dr. Bickel had a student in the lab who was new (to me anyway, I had never met him) and was talking with him about an experiment the student was planning to do with a guitar. The problem the student was having was that there were too many variables to account for. Dr. Bickel pulled me away from what I was working on so that the three of us could have a discussion on characterization. In a physics sense, what this means is to describe in physical terms the characteristics of an object: permittivity, capacitance, solubility, density, resistivity, conductance, Bulk Modulus, Young's Modulus, crystal structure, tensile strength, transmission, etc. All are examples of characteristics of objects, i.e., qualities of an object which can be fundamentally determined via laboratory technique.
After finishing with that topic, Dr. Bickel left, tasking me with determining the status of an ancient frequency generator - it was only mostly broken. After finding this out, I reassembled the device and informed Dr. Bickel. I then moved on to a different, more cloistered room which contained additional equipent I needed to familiarize myself with. Some of these pieces, I am told, are more than forty years old, and can - on occasion - spontaneously combust. Be forewarned.
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