I have lots of stories about kit. This isn’t one of them.
Now that I’m working with the results of science, rather than generating it myself, I don’t get to play much with really cool equipment (although I do seem to be getting introduced to lots of new ideas, which is also cool but in a different way).
However, I do, through my network of spies, maintain access to at least looking at cool gadgetry.
Stage 11 chick embryo
It is, if you like, a kind of vicarious lab life. The forty hour embryo in the picture above for example: one of my spies is learning how to dissect them. As you might imagine, this is quite a fiddly job, and decent scissors are necessary. It’s just as fiddly when they’re a bit bigger.
Stage 14 chick embryo
Now, the thing about scissors. The thing about scissors is that, basically, they’re clumsy. It’s difficult to see what you’re cutting for one, especially when you’re looking down a microscope. But enter the Lumsden BioScissors, the coolest kids on the block for micro-dissection:
Yet another use for pipette tips
At first glance they look like forceps, but instead of gripping ends they have blades. You use them just like forceps, in that you squeeze and the very ends come together first, then they slide against each other just like scissors. But from the distal end. Which means you can actually see what you’re cutting: you can place the blades over where you want to cut without guessing and tearing.
Lumsden BioScissors. Apparently belonging to Clemens
So. Cool kit. Cool titanium kit. Which leads me onto something else:
A friend of mine was telling me about her experiments last week and said that it was a pain, having to do a certain thing, and that it’d be really neat to have a tool that would do this certain thing. How to do it actually came to me in a flash, right there and then. I haven’t made any sketches yet, but I should, because it’s amazingly simple in concept and lots of people molecular biologists would buy it. And then, one day, I might actually be able to afford to go to SciFoo.
That’s a work of sheer genius. I only wish I had something fiddly that I could actually use them on!
Oh, goodness, let me show you scissors (which I’ve learned to use on those very embryos, I’d know them anywhere). But yours are pretty awesome, I’ll give them a try.
There are also tungsten-sharpened knives of every shape and size; it’s more fun when you make (and maintain) them yourself. Send your spy my way.
Oops, I meant electrolytically sharpened tungsten knives.
Biologists do get some splendid gadgets, don’t they? I’m sure that I’ve still got a dissection kit somewhere in a box in the garage.
Heather, I wish they were actually mine. They’re hellishly expensive, and someone might get upset if they fell into my pocket.
Cool, expensive gadgets? Sorry, I can’t resist (can you tell I’m getting excited about starting work there on Wednesday?).
Heather: I have some of your cool scissors too. I find I do less damage with the bioscissors – and of course they are such a pretty blue.
Heh Steffi, that’s not a gadget, though, is it? It’s a bloody cool toy, I’ll give you that… and I hope you let us all know about how you get on!
I hope you let us all know about how you get on!
‘course I will! I have a feeling there will be oodles of blogging material 🙂
That’s good, because it’s getting stale around here…
Ah, but we’ll all have beers in August and come back with lots of fresh inspiration – right? 😉
Yay for beer in August!
Patents are where it’s at! Then you can go on Dragons’ Den and get ripped off!
My husband and I have both come up with what we thought were novel and very cool ideas for items that are not available for purchase anywhere. Woodworking tools and sporting / outdoor life equipment, mostly. Then we looked them up in the patent databases and they’ve all been thought of already, just not brought to market. Some of them have been patented but not manufactured for 10 or more years. It’s quite depressing really. I’d buy them (not the woodworking tools, though, for which I am assured there would be a substantial market).