SuburbanAdventure

Periodically we get work requests in the lab that are time consuming, sometimes because combinatronics hits people upside the head.  As children, I think we all learned the “if Sally has 3 shirts and 5 shoes, she has 15 shirt-shoe combinations”.  Well, today I previewed a work order that had 6 materials, with 6 treatments, to put through 4 destructive tests each requiring 10 samples at 3 separate time intervals for a total sample demand of 4320 combinations.  When I asked the requester for the samples, he replied “will 200 be enough?”, reply: “Assuming I can cut them into pieces the size of the portion of your brain that takes care of multiplication, yes”.