What are these people on?

It's ten in the evening on the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston. 6000 researchers have been attending 300 oral presentations of research results since 0830 in the morning. One would think it's about time for heading to bed. But no! There is always more to learn. I myself just laughed when I saw that my poster presentation was scheduled from 2000 to 2300, and I thought no-one would be there. Well, my poster was not that popular, but there were really a lot of people sneaking around to watch the posters.

For those of you that do not know, a poster presentation is the compromise between letting all the researchers presenting something and not having a conference that lasts forever. Before scientific conferences (nearly) all the scientists that want to participate submit an abstract that tells about what they want to present at the conference. If the research results are good, interesting, or if you are a famous scientist, you will get an oral presentation. That means that you have to present your work in front of 50-300 other scientists that are more or less interested in what you have to say. If you are not famous and do not have extremely interesting things to present, you get to present it on a poster, where the other people at the conference can come and see and comment and ask you more questions if they are really interested.

My poster was on magnesium hydride for solar cells. We are the only and first group in the world that do this, so no-one were really interested in the poster. Of course researchers are most interested in what they do themselves, and we kind of fall between the chairs of the hydrogen storage people that work on metal hydrides and the solar cell people that work on, well, solar cells. However; here is my poster: