A microscopic look at some counter materials

Dartmouth College

Another great contact I've made through Twitter in the last few months is the Aspex Corporation in Pittsburgh, PA. Aspex has been in business since the early '90s and they have embraced social media with a savvy and confidence that makes them stand out. The Aspex Corporation makes Scanning Electron Microscopes among other things and that a company in a very technical field and a kitchen designer could strike up a casual acquaintance is a great example of the expansion and simultaneous contraction of the world made possible by social media.

A scanning electron microscope (or SEM) is an instrument for visualizing the surfaces of objects and materials not possible through ordinary optical microscopes. Rather than using a lens to magnify reflected light (an optical microscope) SEMs use a focused beam of electrons to scan a surface.

Aspex Corporation

The electrons bounce back to a detector and the detector generates an image. SEMs can only "see" a small section of an object at a time. So the object being examined is placed on a Sample Stage in the SEM and the stage makes small, incremental movements called rasters. The rasters are then compiled into a complete image and displayed on a screen. It's pretty cool stuff. Most people have seen SEM images of ant's heads or snowflakes and that's a quick explanation of how those images were made.

Well Aspex is running an offer to scan and analyze any sample that can fit inside the chamber of one of their SEMs for free so I took them up on their offer.

I enjoy cutting through marketing speak to an almost unhealthy degree and counter materials are a product category rife with it. For as long as they've been around, I've heard the claims made by quartz composite manufacturers that their products were "perfectly smooth and non-porous." Since this claim is always made during a comparison with the surface irregularities of granite my BS meter goes off.

Quartz composites are a perfectly fine material and I specify their use all the time. In my mind, they are an alternative to natural stone counters but not a substitute for them. They have a very unique look and there are specific times when their use is called for. At the same time, sometimes the over all look of a room calls for granite or soapstone or marble. These materials are not interchangeable and each one has its strengths and weaknesses.

So when Aspex Corporation made its offer to scan any sample I could fit into the chamber of one of their SEMs, I decided to put to the test the quartz composite claims of perfect smoothness and non porosity.

I took two samples that had been sitting on the end of my desk for years and shipped them off to Aspex.

The samples I sent were a piece of Santa Cecelia granite and Sienna Ridge by Silestone. This is by no means an accurate sampling of an entire industry's products. Rather, this is a test of two very specific and very well handled samples. The evidence presented here is anecdotal at best but I still there's something valid to be learned.

photo from Aspex Corp.

Here are my samples upon arrival at Aspex.

photo from Aspex Corp.

Here they are relaxing in front of the PSEM eXpress, Aspex Corporation's bench top model.

The degree of magnification in the following examples is expressed with a scale in each image. The scale is in microns and a micron is another word for a micrometer. A micro meter is a millionth of a meter, put another way, a micron is 1/1000th of a millimeter. Microns are abbreviated as µm. To give you a little more perspective, a human air is 100µm wide and a red blood cell is 8µm in diameter. Salmonella bacteria are 2µm in length and 0.5µm wide.

So here's what my sample of Santa Cecilia looks like.

In this image, the scale at the top reads 200µm. So if you took two human hairs and set them side by side, they would be as wide as the scale.

In this image the scale reads 1000µm. So if you took ten human hairs and set they side by side, they would be as wide as the scale.

Here's another Santa Cecilia granite image at 1000µm.

Now it's quartz composite's turn.

Here's my quartz composite sample with a scale that reads 200µm.

Here is is at a higher magnification, 1000µm

And another shot of it at 1000µm.

Pretty cool, huh? Now, I will grant the quartz composite people an acknowledgement that this sample is smoother than this sample of granite, but I would hardly call it "perfectly smooth and non porous."

So what I take away from this is that I won't be swayed by claims that I should specify quartz composites over natural stone because they are smoother and non-porous (and more hygienic by implication) and I will continue to use composites where they would look best and natural stone where it would look best.

What do you think?

In the meantime, poke around on Aspex Corp's website. You can even send in something of your own with this form. They have a pretty cool contest every week where they invite people to guess what a scan is. Here's last week's:

Care to hazard a guess?

Why it's a Post-it note being pulled back from the pad of course.

Thanks Aspex!

Mammy's little baby loves shortbread

Amid the murmurings that followed Kevin's brilliant post on what used to be a private and quiet Christmas tradition in St. Pete (well, maybe not quiet), a heard a voice calling out for a good Christmas cookie recipe. Well, here's the best one I have.

I love shortbread with something that borders on an obsession and I played around with if for years until I perfected a recipe that produces a buttery, somewhat salty, somewhat sweet and perfectly sand textured shortbread. The ingredients couldn't be simpler, the art to this one comes from the perfect oven temperature and time spent therein.

I used to try to make these with a spoon, but they have to be of a uniform thickness or they won't have the right texture. On a lark I bought a cookie gun one year and it yielded the perfect shortbread cookie. Who knew? Some people call them cookie presses, but I call it a cookie gun. It makes me feel more macho that way.

Anyhow, I bought a Wilton Cookie Press (gun! it's a gun!) Pro Ultra 2. It's perfect --plenty of shapes and it's easy to load and clean.

My Ultimate Shortbread


Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened 
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar 
• 1/4 cup cornstarch 
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Whip butter with an electric mixer until fluffy. Stir in the confectioners' sugar, cornstarch, and flour. Beat on low for one minute, then on high for 3 to 4 minutes. Drop cookies by spoonfuls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 8 minutes in the preheated oven. Watch  them like a hawk. Pull them out of the oven at precisely 8 minutes or they will scorch. Once they're out of the oven let them cool for a couple of minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack. Sprinkle them with powdered sugar while they are still hot if you'd like.

That recipe will make enough shortbread to feed an army but fear not. Take the extras, throw them in a food processor, grind 'em up and make an amazing crust for a cheesecake.

Christmas party tricks

Richard Wiseman is a skeptic, magician, author and psychologist based at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. He is also one of my more entertaining heroes. Here is his top ten list of Christmas party tricks. Amuse and entertain your friends with these, putting out candles with a home made batch of CO2 particularly.




The man's mind won't quit and the world's a better place for it.

I'm back from the frozen north

I am back and I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of my guest bloggers who have ably held down the fort in my absence. So cheers and thank you once again to Elizabeth, JB, David, Nick, Sherry, Saxon, Kit, Kelly, Kevin, Leslie, Julie and Brandon. There's one last straggler and he'll post at some point next week. So Judd gets a preemptive thank you.

Before I left, I told all of my guest bloggers to write what ever they wanted and not to let themselves be constrained by my niche or my usual way of doing things. It was a real thrill to turn on my computer every morning and to see what that day's guest post brought. They were all great, and I love the personal stories most of all.

I was in Washington DC and points east while I was gone and the primary reason for my break was this young lady:

That's my great-niece and I was in DC to meet her for the first time. I still can't get over how recently her mother was a similar babe in arms. The thrill that she gives my sister (the grandmother) or my parents (who are now great-grandparents) is something I can barely imagine. My break was a time for fond remembering and it was great to see so many of my guest posters engage in some fond rememberings of their own.

While I'm showing off baby pictures, this is me with my favorite year-and-a-half-old, red-headed nephew.

I have multitudes of nieces and nephews and I have to be very specific when I play favorites. Kinship question: If the young man above (who's my brother's son) and the mother of the baby above (who's my sister's daughter) are cousins, what does that make my nephew and my great-niece to each other?

But alas, all was not a pleasure trip. I spent some time with the amazing gang at New Ravenna Mosaics on my way back to Florida this week and I cannot wait to write about the wonders I saw in Exmore Virginia.

Anyhow, for those of you who have kept up in my absence I say thank you. I am resuming my usual posting schedule as of now and I have a back log of blog topics I am rarin' to dive into. Stay tuned.

Christmas Mem'ries

Season's Greetings from New Orleans, Y'all! When I was asked to guest post for Paul's blog, naturally I was flattered. I delved deep into my imagination for things to write about. I wanted it to be holiday-themed and relevant for this time of year, but I have found it very difficult to get into the Christmas Spirit so far. With the holiday itself merely days away, I find myself distracted with the reality that I have completely left everything until the last minute. I haven't bought a single gift or mailed even one Christmas card so far. I could blame the horribly unseasonable weather in New Orleans or a demanding work schedule, but what it comes down to is my own supreme laziness. At least I own that. Originally, I thought that a New Orleans Christmas Card would be nice. A post filled with images of yuletide on the river, the Festival Of The Bonfires that lights the way for Papa Noel along the levees in the Parishes farther down the Mississippi. Pictures of graceful Creole Townhouses with cast-iron balconies festooned with garlands and lights, reflecting on the wet, worn cobblestones of the Vieux Carre. That would have been nice....

Then I came up with a few stanzas inspired by Christmases' past spent with Paul as his next-door neighbor in Florida. We always had such a time! Christmas was a big deal on 7th Avenue and was indeed a celebration to last the whole year long. A few lines of poetry were very inspired while others were just too weak or vulgar to be included here. I wouldn't want Paul's blog to get flagged as inappropriate just for the sake of a few penis jokes, but some of the decent ones are too good to waste, so I render them here for you. Ahem......

"Christmas Mem'ries"

By Brandon Bergman

Christmas memories as a child were magic and all,

But the most memorable ones were with our dear Uncle Paul!

We'd arise on The Day, some with Champagne in hand,

And gaze at Paul's tree,

Oh the presents! How grand!

We would tear open gifts, paper and ribbons in piles,

Peaches and Toenisha would create ethnic hairstyles!

We would sing and we'd laugh. Even play some jazz,

"Another glass of Champagne for the Lady Shabazz?"

It all went downhill from there, sort of how the holidays themselves would just disintegrate into shameless episodes of alcohol consumption while the temperate Uncle Paul would watch in bemused horror as Kevin and I opened another case of Prosecco. Ah, the good old days. They were good. They were old. They were days....

Then I remembered the Christmas of 2006. A day that will not soon be forgotten. Our dear sister Kevin had regretfully gone to North Carolina for the holidays, leaving our Christmas table in person but certainly not in spirit(s). I had befriended a couple of New Orleans Katrina refugees, Angelique and Zak, the previous year and invited them to spend a lovely Christmastide at our table along with a friend of theirs named Steve. The weather was warm for St. Petersburg in December and a grand al fresco meal was planned. Zak had brined a turkey and brought the raw bird to roast in my well-used oven. The other side-dishes were waiting for their turns in the oven while the turkey bronzed and crisped.



Meanwhile, we had a few hours to kill, so we began drinking a lot of red wine and carried on such marvelous conversation on the balcony. Allow me to remind everyone who doesn't know, Paul does not imbibe of the grain or of the grape. As he had Christmas Joy to spread in Tampa, Paul took off to return later when dinner would be served.

He returned to find three former and one future New Orleanian rip-roaring with the "Spirit" of Christmas. Dinner was served and I believe that it was delicious. I cannot remember what was served, but with such accomplished cooks in the kitchen, how could it have been anything less? God, I wish I could remember...I remember the wine, however. And unfortunately, the next series of events... I couldn't block it out if I tried, nor would I want to, as these are the days of our lives.

A little back-story: For my birthday the previous August, Paul had gifted me with the unanticipated present of liquor. Not just any liquor, mind you, but a bottle of Absinthe. Ah yes, The Green Fairy. The stuff that Van Gogh drank that inspired him to cut his ear off and send it to a no doubt, horrified and perplexed lover. The same drink that many a Bohemian artist had lost their minds from imbibing regularly. Thanks again, Paul!

Anyway, after dessert was served and the party had been in decline for several hours, I suppose that our dear Uncle Paul craved a little after-dinner entertainment. The fact that we had no spinet to sing carols around made no difference. I was ready to bid our new friends adieu, when Paul suggested "Why don't you bring out the Absinthe?" Ever the shit-stirrer, but a wonderful idea, nonetheless. I rounded up every cordial glass that I could find, set out the appropriate number of sugar cubes and chilled ice-water for the louching of the Absinthe. What an elegant way to end such a marvelous evening! I proudly poured the Absinthe into the little glasses, carefully poured the chilled water over the sugar cubes through the little slotted spoon that came with the bottle and watched the alchemy as the liquor changed from chartreuse to a milky jade color. Magical! Such promise was held in those little glasses! I distributed them to my guests, a toast was made and I drank the contents in one shot as though it were the free Apple Pucker that they give out at the bars here in New Orleans. BOOM! The stuff hit my gut like the blow of a jackhammer and was violently expelled from my gut over the side of the balcony. My guests sat in stunned silence as I retched. And retched. Feeling the need to mark the occasion with words, I made the declaration "It is poison. Don't drink it." To which Angelique replied, "Oh no..." I mean, what else can you say? I went to the bathroom to clean myself up a bit, and returned to the table, still surrounded by my uncomfortable guests, only to have Paul point out the streak of black vomit on the left side of my shirtfront. What happened next is but a foggy memory, but none the less, a memory, unfortunately. Zak entertained us with a delightful and erotic strip-tease, exposing everything to us as if we were a team of doctors out to discover a problem within his urethra.



He even gave us a little wink to punctuate the burlesque, but not with a beaded-eyelash, if you know what I mean. I believe my lover of the time had punched the other guest in the ribs for telling an offensive joke while Zak and I ran around the courtyard in our underwear in some kind of Bacchanalian celebration of wine and revelry. I'm not sure what Angelique was doing. Counting the number of times she'd seen this behavior in the past, I guess.

We finally bid our guests "Goodnight, and Merry Christmas!", and "Let's do this again sometime!" Needless to say, that time has yet to be repeated, thank Christ! I remember waking up the next day with a strange and deep gash on my leg from a falling broken wine glass and a vague, but still painful memory of the night before. As I related that story to Kevin on his way back from North Carolina the next day, I realized that Paul had gotten up much earlier on Boxing Day, and had told him his version of the events of Christmas. I wonder to this day how they differed.

But Paul, as I gaze at the lurid red glow of my Christmas Tree here in New Orleans, I think about you. I wonder how you are spending this Christmas without the antics and melodrama that you no doubt enjoyed in previous years, in the company of myself and our dear sister Kevin. I know, for me at least, that those were the happiest Christmases of my life. So organized. So memorable. I also think of the lurid red glow that comes from my front window in the Treme and think, "Might passers-by think that this is a brothel?" One can never tell in the City of New Orleans. The history of prostitution in this city is so vague.

Brandon Bergman is the author of "Where The Sweet Olive Grows", an insightful blog, dedicated to the preservation of New Orleans culture.