As I have transitioned between working in different labs, collaborating at different institutions, and embraced a number of fieldwork opportunities, I am often reminded of how “where you grow up” (as a scientist) shapes your experimental design choices.
We were working to create a system where we needed to consistently mix many bottles of dissolved organic carbon with sediments. In the name of efficiency, we wanted to have many (well, all) of the bottles mixing at the same time, which ruled out anything like a stir plate.
Where I “grew up”, we had an incubated shaker chamber, so naturally I had designed the experiment subconsciously with that in mind.
Now, dissolved organic carbon rather readily photodegrades. But thankfully the glass panels on the shaker are easily covered in aluminum foil.
(P.S. – Costco-sized aluminum foil is a necessity in the lab as far as I am concerned)
Now – I found myself with an experimental design that did not match the equipment I had available where I was. Time to improvise…
Requirements:
Shake multiple bottles — REALLY shake them, be protected from light.
The closest shaking device we had was this orbital shaker plate. It did not have any modular trays, so we just had base plate. Thankfully the base plate had some screws on either corner….cue the string. Time to tie the bottles down. This was the first layer of multiple.
We could turn it to a high speed and have the water and sediment mixing enough for our liking.
It lasted all night without loosening.
Goal 1: achieved.
Goal 2 (to protect from light) was a fun challenge – see that giant window in the back? This lab is full of sunshine and rainbows (metaphorically and literally)
So I set out to make a box cover around these bottles that would not interfere with their violent shaking but would also allow easy access for us to check on them.
Step 1 – a trip to the recycling.
Step 2: that Costco-sized aluminum foil to the rescue again!
Goal 2: achieved.
Was it perfect? No…it made crinkling sounds the entire time we ran it (which was multiple days), but hey, who doesn’t love a little background noise amid their nice sunny lab space.