attic antics

The Physics building has a small attic on the top floor, which I suppose is the fourth floor. I call it 'small' because it doesn't take up the entire area of the floors below; if the building is an H shape, the attic represents only the middle, horizontal line and not the caps on either end. A better analogy is an I, but as you can see my font does not have capped, capitalized i's, so think of an H but with a longer middle and shorter ends.
It is also directly underneath the roof, so the width is shorter than the floors below as well, with a higher-than-normal height near the two stairwell entrances, and about a three-ft height on the opposite side. Like being stuck in an elongated tent.

I couldn't find the lightswitches, only delay timers that looked a bit like analog kitchen timers stuck to the wall, the kind where you turn a knob and wait, and it goes to 5 minutes past zero before the bell rings and you find your cookies have been burnt to charcoal. Except that these timers were in hours, not in minutes. But either way, they were dodgy looking, and I did not want to play with them. There were windows flush with the floor, and rose about two feet high. A good effect for the outside, but it was a little dark and light coming from the bottom of a wall is a bit unusual.

I was up there looking for something or another, a bright lamp I think, but I'm not sure.
I did not find a single lamp.
What I did find was fascinating, at least the stuff I could see. There was a cabinet in one dark corner with a sign on the sunlit-side reading "FREE TO A GOOD LAB", and though most of the equipment on the shelves were hidden by shadows it looked like balances (both analog and digital), small power generators, ampmeters, that kind of thing. There were many cardboard boxes, some stacked up and clearly empty, some overflowing with old books; filing cabinets with drawers partially falling out; ancient desks, chairs, coatracks; step-ladders and too many other odd pieces of furniture to mention.

I was surprised when I saw a Christmas tree.

I was even more surprised when I examined the attic further and found four or five of them.

How many artificial trees does one PC physics department need? Apparently the answer is less than five, since those have been gathering dust for who knows how long.