Electron beam melter fatal electrocution

Graduate-student aside motivating the gold/iridium/platinum ranking at the top of thermodynamic nobility. Includes the "would have been a shorter wedding" near-electrocution.

We've already talked about which one is best in terms of thermodynamic nobility and resistance to corrosion — it's gold. Number two is iridium, number three is platinum. That's why when I was a graduate student about to get married, I electron-beam melted my wife's engagement ring, and then machined it. They couldn't afford the gold, actually. But I wanted to have something a little different. I also almost got electrocuted — that would have been a shorter wedding.

Christmas Eve 1962, a researcher at the same lab where Tom later worked was electrocuted reaching to pull a sparking wire. 6,000 volts; wet shoe soles from rain.

I was working on the electron beam melter where the last time someone got killed in the laboratory was Christmas Eve of 1962. They used to have sparks here, and they knew it was this one wire. He reached out — it had been raining that night, Christmas Eve, the soles of his feet were wet — he reached down to pull the wire away so it would stop sparking, and electrocuted himself. Six thousand volts. In '73 I was using the same piece of equipment. I'd be sitting there for a couple of days, and I'd hear a zap inside the vacuum system, melting platinum-iridium. Of course there's a Faraday cage around it. This went on for about three weeks while I was working on it, before the technician finally realized we had to fix this. I didn't tell my wife the story for about 32 years.