Month: August 2019

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The Glove Box

Lately, I’ve been interfacing with the glove box a lot, which is next to inevitable in my field of study.

If you have never seen or heard of a glove box before, I have got an exclusive, self-explanatory diagram of it to show. But like all things science, this story is not as simple as that.

… But suffer, one must: The bare-minimum illustration of a glove box. (If text too small, click on image).

If your glove box is big, in a looming sort of way, it can be quite intimidating at first. And it can seem so… fancy to be working in a glove box then. Like you had to qualify for it. Well, with more experience, you find out that the basic qualifications you need are: 1) having a piece of work that you need to do in a glove box; and 2) appropriate height (as in, tallness of a scientist) relative to the glove box (but let’s be real here, the second criterion doesn’t really exist – stand on a chair if you must).

Plus, having to wear thick big gloves of the “glove” box, it becomes plain clumsy to work in it. And my excuse of “I-am-still-new-to-working-in-the-glove-box” expired a long time ago (which I actually whined about for quite some time compared to normal, not-so-fussy people).

So now I have had to accept that I AM fully responsible for whatever clumsiness I commit – which makes me not-such-a-big-fan of the bumbling person who works in the glove box and cannot even pick up a bottle without first dropping it a couple of times.

The “person” who works in the glove box? Pfft! That’s not me! She is Qudsia Forcephands (secret note: that’s the name for my alter ego for when I have to work in the glove box). She had to be really pushed to start working in there and she kept complaining about how she was still new to working in the glove box even when it was her sixth time! (it’s UNBELIEVABLE what some people will say so they will not have to work, it’s really sad).

But I think, with time (and with MUCH encouragement and suggestions from me), Forcephands is learning the tricks of the trade and she has become waaay better at navigating inside the glove box now. And, as the name might give you an idea, she is now quite adept at using forceps almost as if they were extensions of her hands (or gloves of the glove box).

Forcephands is still somewhat lazy and I often have to give her pep-talks, and even now, she keeps dropping everything in the glove box (are all those forceps inside the glove box there for nothing? Tut tut). But what can you do, some people will just remain at their level no matter how much you try. She has, though, become quite independent at working in the glove box now and, I have to admit, I am somewhat proud of her.

(But I still don’t completely trust her).

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Stupid Questions

They say that there are no stupid questions.

And yet, in classrooms, presentations, and seminars, it’s very typical for to-be questioners to start with “maybe it is a very stupid question, but…”.

Often, once the question is out there to be judged for its “stupidity”, you find out that it was not a stupid question at all. That could be because there really are no stupid questions (or are there? We have probably not phrased every possible question in every language to make this assumption, so let’s just say that most questions are not stupid).

And yet, even though there are probably no stupid questions, we still like to call some questions stupid (or would have others and ourselves believe that). Working in science, where it can be very important to have the correct terminology, I sometimes wonder if it is really the right thing to do.

In my short career as a scientist, I have also come to believe that it’s rare when a question is stupid (probably only the ones that flit through my head). The thing is, we have been judging the quality of questions on wrong parameters. When you are all these scientists, where everyone is quite competent at what they do themselves, and not-so-good at what the others do, and no two people are working on the exact same thing at the same time – it becomes tricky.  While some questions can be quite basic for some people, they can be a whole novel perspective from another’s point of view.

So, in reality, there are no stupid questions; only rookie questions, basic ones, newbie’s perspectives, outsider’s outlooks. These are all far, far from stupid.

All “stupid” questions just need to be relabelled.

P.S. The author has nothing personal against the word “stupid”. All views expressed in the post are completely neutral and unbiased.

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Discoveries in the Lab

So it happened some days ago, during an unusually in-depth cleaning session of the lab, that we came across super-strong magnets. Such a great discovery should not be in vain.  So since then, we have been trying to come up with some uses for these.

I mean, they can be very useful to pull magnetic stirrers out of a solution if you don’t want to throw away the solution or contaminate it by putting something else in it. But THEN, the magnets might be so strong that if you would use a pair of “metal” forceps to grab the magnetic stirrer sitting on the lip of the bottle, the super-strong magnets might deflect the FORCEPS themselves and you may not be able to grab the magnet AT ALL (yes, I tried – in a casual evasion-of-common-sense moment).

But of course, that could not be the only possible use. What if, instead of pulling the stirrers out of solutions, you wanted to keep the stirrers INSIDE? Like when you are washing magnetic stirrers in a bottle and you come to the part when you have to drain the liquid (soap solution, ethanol, etc.). There’s always a risk of dropping the stirrer with it, which means you have to wash it all over again (depending on where you actually drop it).

So then, if you would use a super-strong magnet (or maybe even just a magnet), you can keep the magnet inside while completely inverting your bottle to drain the solvent. Can be pretty useful sometimes. And now you have a use for super-strong magnets lying around (or rather, sticking around) in your lab.

And as I am now discovering, they are also quite good for designing little games. Like taking smaller magnets and dropping them close enough to the bigger magnets and see how they deflect the dropping magnets. If you control the distance precisely, you can make them hit a particular point on a metal pole.

And there, now you have a game of magnet darts (and another use for super-strong magnets lying around in your lab).