B.o.B. WROTE A DISS TRACK TO PROVE TO NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON THAT THE EARTH IS ACTUALLY FLAT

Photo of the Day: Ross Sea Pancake Ice

Photographer note: "Pancake Ice" as seen from a vessel during late summer in the Ross Sea, Antarctica.

Photo by Sam Edmonds (Mona Vale, Australia); Ross Sea, Antarctica From our 13th Annual Photo Contest. Winners announced in the spring!

If there was a sitcom based on my lab it would be a comedy of errors and near catastrophe featuring the Lab Weirdo™, the Confused Undergrad™, the Done With This Shit Fifth Year™, the Fourth Year Who Is The Only Person Who Knows How The Instruments Work But Is Impossible To Find™, the Ever Present Third Year™, and the Exhausted Second Year™

It would be called “Don’t Quench the Magnet”

Stupid Lab Mistakes: a Constant Across All Levels of Experience

So today was day one of a tyrosinase lab. We had to centrifuge our organic matter sample (homogenized mushroom gills) to separate the soluble proteins from the rest of the tissue, and we counterbalanced our sample with an identical centrifuge tube of equal weight filled with water. We did all of this under the supervision of a TA and our professor.

My lab partners and I have used centrifuges many times before, but what we (and the instructors) failed to notice was that these particular tubes required an adapter for this particular centrifuge. We were spinning it up to about 7000 rcf when we heard a muffled “bang,” then the centrifuge slowed to a stop. When we opened it up, we discovered that the water tube had EXPLODED, shattering into a hundred little plastic pieces. the tube containing our organic sample slurry was thankfully intact, but it was badly warped and cracked. We spent the next 20 minutes or so carefully wiping water off every nook and cranny of the centrifuge interior, thanking our lucky stars that it wasn’t mushroom gloop.

I keep thinking that gaining more practical lab experience will save me from this kind of thing, but if the three different generations of chemists present couldn’t keep it from happening then there is no hope. These incidents are the things that add unexpected excitement to my life, though, so I suppose it’s not all bad.

A snake story, based on an experience I had while I was in Florida.

HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT THESE NEKO ATSUME UNDERTALE CHARACTERS MY FRIEND DREW!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!!! she doesn’t have a tumblr but I needed to share them with the world and she said it was okay so LOOOOOK!!!!

Doing vs. Writing | PHD Comics | http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1887

new print in my shop!

Pretty frost on the nitrogen tank

A sculptor built “A Space Program” almost entirely out of items you can get at the hardware store.