I don’t use robots, I am not so cool! But I use very big microscopes, with lots of buttons! And I use other machines! Sometimes I wish I could have a robot to put all my flies into new tubes with new food. I have so many that it takes solo long! That’s what I am doing now! 🙂
I use fancy machines, like a FACS sorter. I am not quite sure when something stops being a machine and is called a robot. The FACS sorts my cells in different test tubes- one type of cells in one test tube, the other in another test tube. It does this at a speed of sorting 3,000 cells per second!
Er no, not unless you call my PhD students robots! And I try very hard to programme them to do things properly!
Robots are really, really, really expensive so a lab like mine couldn’t afford to buy one! Like Robert though, we also use lots of machines which can do amazing things! One of my favourites is the ultracentrifuge that can spin samples at 120,000 revolutions per minute. Can you imagine how fast that is?? It spins round 2000 times every second! It goes so fast, it has to be done in a vacuum so that there is no friction and so that it doesn’t catch fire!
Henry,
Yes! We do! But they’re really, really boring robots. They do liquid handling and move stuff from plate to plate. They emphatically do not do anything interesting, dominate the world, or play at being God. Only we get to do that 🙂
The coolest one – by FAR – is one that’s used for X-ray crystallography. It tests out loads of different conditions to see which ones are the best for making crystals. It makes the mixtures, dilutes out the proteins, then takes a picture every day to see how the crystals are growing – 10,000 times over!
Yep. Fortunately it was on a bank holiday, because the wall it took out was the opposite side of the corridoor.
A Russian visiting scientist had discovered a way of turning the speed control up beyond its limit…
Comments
Clare commented on :
Sorry Susanne, I called you Robert! Apologies!
Robert commented on :
@Clare we had one of those centrifuges exploded once. Now that was fun.
Clare commented on :
Eek! I bet that was frightening? Did it take the wall out??
Robert commented on :
Yep. Fortunately it was on a bank holiday, because the wall it took out was the opposite side of the corridoor.
A Russian visiting scientist had discovered a way of turning the speed control up beyond its limit…
jackyboy1999 commented on :
How… unfortunate!!! 😀
Robert commented on :
We do have fun, us.
sophie7 commented on :
LOL unlucky! 🙂
Clare commented on :
Good grief! Good job it was a bank holiday. There are some things you just don’t mess with…