Not Everyone Is Scrooge McDuck.

fun things to do in lab

accidentally crushing a pcr tube when opening it with one hand

dropping… anything. especially an entire box of frozen samples. 

slightly too large gloves and getting them caught as you close tubes

when the magnetic spin bar spins too fast and does the thing

listening to someone else’s forgotten timer go off

“uh… what’s that smell..”

going in for a pipette tip and then overturning the entire box

16 hour time-points

srsly who invented 16 hr time-points

they’re inhumane

labelling rows and rows of 600 ul microcentrifuge tubes by hand

“we’re sorry but this reagent has been back-ordered for 3 months”

listening to the scraping noise of plastic culture flasks on metal shelves

getting your samples stuck in any sort of machine

“i need you to go and catalog every chemical we have”

cleaning cell culture incubators with aerosolized 70% ethanol 

having the fire alarms go off when you’re literally in the middle of something that can not be put down no i will perish in this fire before i forgo this damn experiment!

that sense of pure panic when you realize you miscalculated how much reagent you need

“one of your mice died and its cage mates ate half the body”

(https://iep.utm.edu/art-emot/)

it he @ultrainfinitepit

Atomization is the process of breaking a liquid into a spray of fine droplets. There are many methods to accomplish this, including jet impingement, pressure-driven nozzles, and ultrasonic excitement. In the images above, a drop has been atomized through vibration of the surface on which it rests. Check out the full video. As the amplitude of the surface’s vibration increases, the droplet shifts from rippling capillary waves to ejecting tiny droplets. With the right vibrational forcing, the entire droplet bursts into a fine spray, as seen in the photo above. The process is extremely quick, taking less than 0.4 seconds to atomize a 0.1 ml drop of water. (Photo and video credit: B. Vukasinovic et al.; source video)

That one time my roommate couldn't watch Shane's Asagao Academy stream so I live-texted it to her instead.

@didyouknowshaning‘s asagao stream part 1/part 2

Small changes add up to big results. You can activate the movement. 

Tune into the livestream for the United State of Women Summit 6/14 here . GIF by Tumblr Creatr Thoka Maer

The Wolf Among Us

what do you think about chemical weapons and the use those weapons had against humanity? how do you feel about something as great as chemistry being used for such horrible things?

I’m sorry I just found this message buried in my inbox, so I don’t know when I received it.Short answer: Use chemistry for good. War bad. Chemical based war very bad. Be nice to other humans. Be nice to chemistry 

Reverse psychology that's not in psychology. Reverse biology...?

How did you decide to do a project with RNA?

I was having a conversation with someone in our department about how useful and cheap next-gen sequencing is, and how I was considering spending out my grant on a project looking at immune gene expression in spiders. He told me flat out that I wasn’t capable of doing it, because I wouldn’t understand it enough to ever publish. So I used a kit to extract RNA, sent off the samples, read a few books in the meantime, learned to code, wrote the scripts for R and the supercomputer, then did it. I’m writing it up now, and have found some pretty cool stuff! I’m glad I learned it too, since it’s a good skill to have.

TL;DR: some asshole told me I couldn’t do it, so I decided to do it.

We take for granted that drops which impact a solid surface will splash, but, in fact, drops only splash when the surrounding air pressure is high enough. When the air pressure is low enough, drops simply impact and spread, regardless of the fluid, drop height, or surface roughness. Why this is and what role the surrounding air plays remains unclear. Here researchers visualize the air flow around a droplet impact. In (a) we see the approaching drop and the air it pulls with it. Upon impact in (b) and © the drop spreads and flattens while a crown of air rises in its wake. The drop’s spread initiates a vortex ring that is pinned to the drop’s edge. In later times (d)-(f) the vortex ring detaches from the drop and rolls up. (Photo credit: I. Bischofberger et al.)