The Six Million Dollar Man

Super-Cool Wonder-Ponder-Machine for Precision Pipetting

I spent three days at Micronova this week and I finally got some real laboratory experience. Thus far all I've done at my office is studying and reading. (Clayden, Greeves, Warren & Wothers: Organic Chemistry - I know this sounds stupid to most of you but I can really recommend this book for anyone interested in organic chemistry. It's a wonderful basic text-book. And it even fits most bookshelves with ease as it's only about 1400 pages long.)

So, now I got to spend some time in a lab. I was tutored by a senior researcher, of course. We studied the aggregation of chlorophylls in THF with different mass ratios by absorption spectroscopy. (The results were inconclusive at best.) The spectrometer was an exciting piece of equipment, sure. But the most fabulous gadget in the lab was the Super-Cool Wonder-Ponder-Machine for Precision Pipetting! (SCWPMPP for short.) I really feel bad for writing this because I am basically an electronics engineer and the gizmo in question operates 100% mechanically. (Compare with the spectrometer, for instance...) But I mean, really: I've never felt that kind of pleasure just by pushing a button with my right thumb. Or any other finger, for that matter. How cool is it to be able to transfer exactly 0,0234 ml of a liquid from a bottle to another? It's mind-boggling!
And now I'll be able to help my brother with his pharmacy excercises. (For a fee, naturally.) Right, eh?

Ok. Now that I've finished writing this post I find myself a bit baffled. Why the f..... should ANYONE be interested? I guess no-one really has a real reason, to tell you the truth. But hey! So what?!? It's MY blog after all.