Every morning, I walk across the campus and up the stone stairway of the old building where the Highway Materials Lab is located. An array of blue equipment dominates the back area of the lab -- in the way that exercise equipment dominates workout gymnasiums. Even the names reflect this comparison: flexural testing machines, asphalt penetration apparatus, Marshall stability systems, Compression machines.

Trying to make sense of the data, I stared into the computer screen as I moved the asphalt test results into the appropriate columns. I was impossible to forget the glass flask that I had dropped in the lab earlier in the day. Before I left the lab, I would need to go down to the storeroom and request another flask.