In case you haven't figured it out, which really look a little closer at our URL, we are biochemists in training. As such we spend an inordinate amount of time in labs, playing with everything from neurotoxins to dihydrogen monoxide. As with all learning experiences there is a lot of learning through mistakes and praying you don't accidentally kill or permanently maim yourself or your lab-mates. These are the horror stories from the lab, please note that names have been changed to protect those students who were a little unsteady on their training wheels...
When we were just sophomores taking Organic II we were working on a lab that used yeast as a catalyst (these make reactions go faster) for a reaction. For this experiment we had a mixture of yeast and a neurotoxin (these attack your nervous system) in a flask with a tube to release the gas. While we were waiting for everyone's yeast to activate one of our lab-mates, lets call him Whirly, commented on how it smelt like fresh baked bread. This comment had La Catedrática yelling across the lab "What are you doing? Don't sniff that!!!", making all of us jump, which is potentially bad when holding a flask full of neurotoxins. Apparently it isn't advisable to deeply inhale the gas released by a reaction involving neurotoxins... Who knew? Not Whirly...
Dirty test tube and a test tube brush, seems pretty easy to figure out right? Use the test tube brush to clean the dirty test tube. Unless your Polo... In which case, you use the test tube brush to shatter the dirty test tube in your hand resulting in broken glass in the sink, a bleeding hand and part of the test tube stuck on the brush. Oh yes my friends, this really happened and La Catedrática was less than amused by Polo's solution which included making Marco get the glass unstuck from the brush and Polo forgoing a band-aid and just putting a glove on to finish up lab.
Back in the days when Marco and Polo weren't Marco and Polo and were just getting to know each other we worked in the department labs. This was a magical time in which we got to watch students like ourselves running around labs like chickens with their heads cut off (cause really when it's not happening to you it's hilarious). During the Organic II final one of the students was determining the melting point of a solid (heating it until it melts while taking the temperature). Unfortunately for her, and the student using the bench across the way, she didn't notice her thermometer was in Fahrenheit not Celsius until it exploded! Shooting a large part of the thermometer into the ceiling tile and little shards scattering across the bench top... Lets just say we were all glad that it wasn't a mercury thermometer.
Marco and Polo have of course had other, non-hazardous, lab experiences, we have:
- Extracted and cloned DNA from A. comosus (a pineapple)
- Synthesized anti-cancer drugs (cisplatin)
- Made lots of very expensive, and possibly harmful, colored glitter (mostly orange)
- Extracted pure-ish caffeine from tea leaves (and excedrine)
- Analyzed Pb (lead) content of the water from the Hobo house (don't worry we're not gonna die... From that)
- Isolated an active protein from E. coli
- Seperated and identified a mixture of two unknown liquids (apparently your nose knows, at least partly anyway)
- Extracted a protien from Dante's muscle (have no fear he had already died of natural causes)
- Committed a felony, we dissolved two pennies in Nitric acid, on Marco's 21st birthday!
- Made nylon rope from liquids
- Synthesized a B-12 (a vitamin in your body) model complex
- Determined our blood types (Marco is A pos and Polo is O neg)
- Isolated, and made necklaces of our DNA
As always, Stay Nerdy, and be a Lab Rat,
Marco & Polo
No comments:
Post a Comment