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Why do I even [teaching]
May. 11th, 2021 11:52 amMorning lab today.
There are too many moving pieces to this week's lab, so lots of last-minute scramble to assemble them all. Especially because the department's ice machine is STILL broken and a lot of this lab involves working with stuff on ice.
Insect hemolymph coagulates too quickly for undergrads to work with it effectively.
One of the last-minute items involved melting down pipette tips to make them into little pestles for grinding and crushing up insect frass (poop) samples to measure uric acid production. With all the running around, I had to have a student step in and monitor the Bunsen burner.
Shortly thereafter, students noticed that my refurbished vortexer that I'd plugged in was smoking.
Well. THAT is going to be fun to deal with.
But they got to see some cool stuff, so that's good. Not quite as frustrating as last week's lab.
There are too many moving pieces to this week's lab, so lots of last-minute scramble to assemble them all. Especially because the department's ice machine is STILL broken and a lot of this lab involves working with stuff on ice.
Insect hemolymph coagulates too quickly for undergrads to work with it effectively.
One of the last-minute items involved melting down pipette tips to make them into little pestles for grinding and crushing up insect frass (poop) samples to measure uric acid production. With all the running around, I had to have a student step in and monitor the Bunsen burner.
Shortly thereafter, students noticed that my refurbished vortexer that I'd plugged in was smoking.
Well. THAT is going to be fun to deal with.
But they got to see some cool stuff, so that's good. Not quite as frustrating as last week's lab.
