What is it.... the game! Post unknown objects to ID... and to stump others!

I'm curious as to the one long leg, was that pushed into the snow/ground?

Enquiring minds have ideas... but we *need* to know!







OK, I exaggerate - we *want* to know. What is it really, and/or what could creative people use it for?

Rabbit hay manger

Put a cloth in it and strain fruits, etc for making jelly.

It does have the look of a chinois/conical strainer. Also looks like a conical French fry cone holder but too big, maybe one of the conical fryer oil strainers but they usually have some kind of legs that cross the top of a pot. That is my guess now, turkey fryer oil strainer.

In the words of Monty Python ... and now for something completely different. Any guesses what this is?

Pilot light

In a way you're lukewarm but no. This is done in complete darkness.

Jay Angler wrote:Enquiring minds have ideas... but we *need* to know!



OK, I exaggerate - we *want* to know. What is it really, and/or what could creative people use it for?

Is the white coating enamel or is it that rubberized stuff?
That would make a difference in what it was used for.
To me, it doesn't look like something used for hot things.

Judith Browning wrote: Is the white coating enamel or is it that rubberized stuff?
That would make a difference in what it was used for.
To me, it doesn't look like something used for hot things.

I would say enamel. I'm guessing the thing is old, as in decades old.

Maybe Jay's thing is a holder for a filter to be used as a paint strainer.

What Jay's brings to mind, for me, is a stand for one of these, that would hook in the side of a stock pot:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1TPVJR8/ref=sspa_mw_detail_2

I thought we determined it was for holding filters for hot oil or for straining milk?
like this one https://www.sessionfixture.com/filter-cones-10-50-ea-per-box-6629

(did I dream this??? early morning deep thoughts)

Mike Barkley wrote:In the words of Monty Python ... and now for something completely different. Any guesses what this is?

Something involving heat? The chamber (not sure of terminology here) of a gas chromatography device?

Theresa, that is getting close. No heat involved but it is a chamber. A vacuum chamber to be precise. So for all practical purposes there is zero gas. It's almost outer space level vacuum.

I was asked to give a sense of scale. The pix are more or less life size. Nothing huge, nothing tiny.

I'm not asking specifically what the wire cage is. I'm looking for what the entire scene is about. The total of everything seen in the pix.

Tereza Okava wrote:I thought we determined it was for holding filters for hot oil or for straining milk?
like this one https://www.sessionfixture.com/filter-cones-10-50-ea-per-box-6629

I think this is as close as we're going to get. There is only a holder on one side, so it can't hang over a pot.

I can't see any sign of some part being broken off.

However, the site it's from has done a lot of biodiesel, which can require sieves on a small scale, and also uses a lot of barrels. My best guess is that the round point sits in a bung hole, the leg that moves rests against the edge of the barrel, and some sort of filter slides into the funnel part, probably just with screen near the bottom.

This is the best guess we're going to get, so I declare this one closed. I have not been able to find any images on the web that match it with a single leg only.

This post will clarify a point or muddy the waters. Probably both. It is intentionally vague but more specific details will be added later. It's a bit of a deep geeky rabbit hole but we need to go down it a little to understand why I think this is such a cool picture. In the words of young Frankenstein ... it's abynormal.

In a roundabout but important way light is involved. A primary something comes out of the dark hole in the center of the bottom picture. Which generates secondary somethings that are collected by a device inside the screen. When the secondary somethings hit the device they generate photons (light). That light is extremely faint though. Not visible to human eyes & light never enters the chamber. The curved part attached to the screen device is one big fiber optic strand about as thick as your thumb which transmits the faint light outside the vacuum chamber. It is then strengthened enough to barely be visible.

Disregard

Mike Barkley wrote:This post will clarify a point or muddy the waters. Probably both. It is intentionally vague but more specific details will be added later. It's a bit of a deep geeky rabbit hole but we need to go down it a little to understand why I think this is such a cool picture. In the words of young Frankenstein ... it's abynormal.

In a roundabout but important way light is involved. A primary something comes out of the dark hole in the center of the bottom picture. Which generates secondary somethings that are collected by a device inside the screen. When the secondary somethings hit the device they generate photons (light). That light is extremely faint though. Not visible to human eyes & light never enters the chamber. The curved part attached to the screen device is one big fiber optic strand about as thick as your thumb which transmits the faint light outside the vacuum chamber. It is then strengthened enough to barely be visible.

Is it some kind of spectrometer? Does a laser come through the dark hole and measure something?  I don't even know what a spectrometer is usually measures. Sugar content?

That's a good guess Anna. It's in the ballpark at least. The pix I sent are the scanning electron microscope version of a selfie. I will describe how the pix were made after the sun comes up & some more coffee is down.

Some electron microscopes have spectrometers attached as accessories. Energy dispersive (EDS) & wavelength dispersive (WDS). EDS determines which elements are in an unknown material. Say a glob of metal. EDS will tell the user it's iron, nickel, & copper for example. WDS will give the exact percentages of each.

Electron microscopy begins with generating an electron beam. This picture is the business end of a (defective) lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6) filament. I looked up the current prices ... $1300 so not cheap. A tungsten filament is much cheaper. Those are used too. Not as good as LaB6 but considerably cheaper. The filament is heated so it emits electrons. It also has a high voltage applied to it. It is called the accelerating voltage. After the electrons leave the electron gun they go through a series of electromagnetic lenses that shape, position, & focus the beam onto a grounded sample. If the sample is not conductive it is usually sputter coated with a thin layer of carbon or sometimes gold so that it conducts. The high voltage slams the electron beam into the grounded sample which then completes the circuit like every electronic circuit does. BUT the interaction of the beam with the sample causes other types of electrons & x-rays to be emitted. Various detectors can detect each of those things. Each analyzes the sample in different ways.

The part inside the cage detects what is called secondary electrons & creates the main type of micrograph image one sees out in the world. It has a voltage applied to it to attract the secondary electrons. The dark thing around the central dark hole is called a backscatter detector. It is more specialized.

So now to the point of why the original pix I sent for this are so unusual. Instead of a conductive sample I used a glass light bulb (nonconductive) as the sample. Zapped it with a 40 kilovolt beam for a few seconds. Since the sample was nonconductive those electrons could not complete the circuit so it charged up the light bulb glass. Then I turned the accelerating voltage down to a only a few kilovolts. When that beam hit the highly charged glass it deflected those beam electrons in all directions. Which then smashed into all the internal chamber parts you see in the picture. Then the secondary electrons from that abnormal interaction were detected & processed by the detector & video circuitry in normal fashion.  

I warned y'all it was geeky.

The last pictures are more typical of real life use.