• Question: What equipment do you use for your research, are they like every day equiptment like the thermometer, or is there specific equipment? - And also is the results you get from these, always accurate?

    Asked by storz001 to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by keanna123.
    • Photo: Nicolas Biber

      Nicolas Biber answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Sometimes everyday objects serve scientific purposes very well. I use tent pegs for position marking or cotton buds to clean my samples. Very often it’s quicker and cheaper to just buy everyday things in town rather than ordering fancy lab equipment from a specialist. Sometimes fancy lab equipment makes your life a lot easier though, and especially when it comes to sample analysis you want to use equipment people have used for the same purpose before (‘standard equipment’). The most specific instrument I use is an FTIR (fourier-transform infrared spectrometer). The FTIR breaks the light I send through a material sample up into its whole spectrum, and it measures how much light gets through the sample in different areas of the spectrum. This tells me the composition of the material I am looking at.

    • Photo: Christine Switzer

      Christine Switzer answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      For my combustion experiments, I use a lot of fancy thermometers called thermocouples. No, they are not always accurate. For the field studies, we expect 10% failure rate because the little parts are so fiddly and can fall out of their connections far too easily. I had this great idea if I use gaffer tape to seal the connections then everything will be fine. No! Wrong! I just made it harder to go back in and fix the bad connections. Like Nicolas, I use FTIR especially for the combustion gases. We call it a screening tool because it can identify a huge range of compounds but it is not great for specifics. After a run through the FTIR, we know what to look for and can choose what instruments to use. We have a big analytical lab that has lots of toys for this purpose. I know how to use some of them, but not most of them.

      For my field experiments, we use a mix of technical and non technical equipment. Probably the best tool is visual observation. Photos are very useful, often more than complicated equipment. I did a site visit late last week that I should really post the photos here. If I can figure out how. 🙂 We visited a waste heap (called a bing, but I think that’s a Scots word) that is burning underground. The change on the surface between that visit and the first visit is amazing. The fire burns underground but cracks form on the surface. First water is driven out so the cracks are surrounded by moss that loves the wet environment. Then the water becomes steam and the moss dies. Then the steam stops and the cracks release heat. After a while it’s hot enough to melt plastic so we have to be careful what fancy equipment we try to use. My photos show the transition of one really big crack from grassy moss to steam. I will go back next week and probably it will be lifeless and hot to the touch.

    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi storz001 🙂

      I have two types of experiments that I do in my research: simulations that I do on the computer and ‘real’ experiments.

      In the simulation experiments I only use a computer. The simulation is a bit like a computer game – we set up a virtual population of animals and give them a few rules to follow and then see what happens to them after a certain time. We then usually try different rules for the animal behaviour and see how the results change. The problem with simulations is not generating the data but it is making sure that the simulations we are running are realistic and can be related to the real world problem we are interested in. Often we use the computer simulation to make predictions about (for example) how an animal group might behave under certain conditions. We would then run a real experiment to test this prediction. The advantage of using a computer is that we can run lots of these types of experiments very quickly and get lots of data.

      In the real experiments I do we usually have some animals in a tank or arena and then observe their behaviour. For example at the moment we are looking at swimming plankton (tiny bugs that swim around in sea water). These are very difficult to film as we have to use a camera attached to a microscope. We are also looking at the behaviour of coral reef fish (like Nemo!) and how they react to sound and other signals like food. These are much easier to film but require a bigger tank – we actually do some experiments with fish in a child’s paddling pool!

      We have also done some experiments on human crowds to see if they follow similar rules of behaviour to animal groups. For this we had to use a sports hall and film from a balcony!

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi storz001,

      Sometimes we use everyday equipment – thermometer, measuring cylinder, glass beaker, syringes etc.

      Other times my results might need to be measured by more specialised machines such as :
      1. The flow cytometer – I can measure cell size and amount of content with this machine. If I have given my cells a fluorescent dye and they absorb it then the amount of fluorescence can be measured so it can tell me which cell cycle phase it is in. Or giving it another dye (Annexin V-FITC) can bind to the cell membrane and tell me if they are undergoing apoptosis (programmed cell death).

      2. The spectrophotometer is used to measure the optical density (basically how intense are the colours of the solution or of my cells)- very simple, just put the plate (containing my samples) in and the machine does the reading.

      3. The HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography)- long and fancy name but it is really simple because it is all automated. So it will inject your sample in the correct column (a special metal tube with a lining of sand inside) that will separate the different chemicals you got in your sample and have a UV light detector which measures any chemicals that excites at the particular wavelength you have set it to detect!

      4. Mass Spectrometer – (I remember reading this in GCSE/A level time) basically you only need a small amount of sample and the Mass Spec will fire it out at a super high speed to the detector at the other end! So the smaller chemicals in the sample will hit the detector faster compared to the bigger/heavier chemicals!

      In Chemistry – I think repeated results should always be the same (if you have done it the same/correctly) because you either have got the wanted chemical (specific molecular weight) or you haven’t (so you get a slightly different weight/results from data).

      In biology – cells work in their own way so it is important that I repeat my experiments and get at least 3 consistent repeats!! (not as easy as it sounds ;))

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi storz001!

      I use lots of everyday equipment: string, cat food (I use it as bait for crayfish!), buckets, measuring tape, torches and fish tanks. I’ve even used nail polish before, to mark my crayfish!! Here’s a nice pink shade:

      Some of the equipment I use is more specialised though, for example:
      – Electrofishing gear. This is special equipment that I use to fish for crayfish or fish. It involves using electricity to put an electric current through the water – the electricity stuns the crayfish and makes it easy to catch them. Electrofishing can be dangerous, since it involves electricity and water – when you’re using the equipment, you have to make sure you don’t put your hands in the river! I had to go on a course to learn how to use everything before I was allowed to do it. Here’s a photo of a couple of my workmates electrofishing for crayfish: (it was quite a cold day in October so they don’t look very happy 😉 )

      – I’ve also used a pH meter (which measures pH of the water), conductivity meter (which measures how easily the water conducts electricity) and a flowmeter (which measures how fast the water is going). These pieces of kit are not always very accurate but they at least give me a rough idea of what conditions are like in the river or lake.

      – The most exciting piece of equipment I’ve used is radio-tracking gear. A couple of summers ago, I tracked the movements of crayfish in the River Clyde by attaching tags (called radio tags) to them. The tags give out a signal that can be picked up by a big antenna, that’s attached to a receiver (and plugged into the receiver, I have headphones so I can hear how strong the signal is). By moving the antenna around and listening to changes in how strong the signal is, I can figure out where the tagged crayfish is. Here’s what it looks like: Radiotracking is faily accurate… I was able to figure out pretty much exactly where the crayfish was by using the equipment.

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