A large chunk of this summer semester has been spent researching abroad. I was granted a Company of Biologists Travelling Fellowship and set off to England to learn immunohistochemistry.
A tremendous amount of preparation went into this – planning and packing supplies for a method you have never done is no small feat.
One item I knew I needed was microscope slides – thankfully, there was a drawer in the Wood Lab labelled “Microscopy Supplies” and I hit the mother lode of slides. Dozens of unopened boxes.
I grabbed them and packed them tightly to avoid breakage. They made it to Manchester in one peice – the hard part, I thought, was over.
When I unpacked the slides, quite a few boxes had what could best be described as “glass bricks” in them, rather than a box of slides. No wonder they did not break in transit – they were all stuck together!
Those that did not shatter when I tried to pull them apart emerged with an array of what I think a microbiologist would dream of.
No amount of detergent or alcohol were getting these slides clean.
Moral of the story: check whether your glass has “gone bad” before you pay to ship it across the world – some “shelf-stable” materials still expire.