On a recent morning, Rick Lake stopped in the middle of giving a tour of NIST’s machine shop to ponder a part sitting on a shelf. It was about 25 cm long and made of metal coated in a sheen of purple and blue. Along the top, gaskets, nuts, and bolts stuck out like spines on a steampunk caterpillar. At the top, one big opening poked out like a head.

“It’s a manifold made for integrating gasses,” Lake explained, and each opening was supposed to provide an attachment for a nozzle. The dramatic, almost psychedelic color was the result of coating the entire piece, made of stainless steel, in vaporized glass. The coating was experimental and was meant to reduce reactions between the metal of the piece and the mixture of the gasses in the scientist’s experiments.

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