Confessions of a (former) Lab Rat

You might be forgiven for thinking that Hogg was the only character in my high school chemistry class. Indeed, sometimes I was forced to make my own entertainment: such as the time I poured a glass of water over the housemistress’ head. From two floors up. Or set fire—but no. I’ll leave that one for later.

High school physics experiment

There was, in fact, a whole regiment of patsies that could be relied upon to relieve the routine of studying for ‘O’ Level. And some of them managed to do it from behind a wall or two…

One fine day we traipsed into the chemistry lab to be given a list of instructions, complete with boxes for us to write down our observations. It was meant to be some sort of test; and just so that there could be no cheating, the other top chemistry set was sitting it simultaneously.

The first task was to take a set amount of chalk, and heat it over a bunsen. Then we were to let the powder cool, weigh that, then transfer it to a watchglass and add water. Finally we had to measure the pH of the suspension and figure out what just happened. Something like that, anyway.

We had instructions. Clear and and detailed instructions. We heated up the chalk. We (eventually) transferred the resulting powder to watch glass. We read the bit where the instructions said ‘holding it in your hand, add three drops of water’. And because we were doing this (all forty or so of us between two classes) simultaneously, the scream came at the precise moment we were dripping water onto the innocuous-looking powder in a watchglass.

Because some berk next door (and I know who it was was but I’m not going to embarrass him, on the off-chance he might track me down after 25 years) had taken the instructions too literally: tipped the powder directly into his hand and added water to that. The exothermic reaction alone must have hurt; the alkali burning a hole in his hand did the rest.

CaO (s) + H₂O (l) ⇔ Ca(OH)₂ (aq) (ΔH_r = −63.7 kJ mol^-1)

Can you tell what it is, yet?

These mornings, my alarm runs ahead of the Earth turning to bring the sun above the Thames; and the sky is already dark by the time I emerge from the Tube in the evening. There is a smoky, leafy scent to the air; hazelnuts litter the paths and I shoof through the drying leaves of red-haired Autumn.

This weekend is my church’s harvest festival. We’re having a shared lunch after the service: unfortunately I think that my vision of long oaken tables and marrows and carrots and whole roast pigs and raucous singing and lusty young wenches serving foaming mead Ed: does mead foam? Please check from pewter mugs is likely to remain unfulfilled. It does, however, remind me that back in May and June, when the year in bright blues and greens danced to an altogether less sombre tune, I set to my own little garden and tried to defend it against the Axis of Gastropod.

You might remember that I used coffee grounds to keep the slugs and snails at bay, much to Jenny’s amusement. And I remember that I never reported back on the long term effects of that experiment. So, the coffee grounds did keep the little bastards away, although I am not tempted to use that method routinely in future, for two reasons.

First, the power of coffee waned rather quickly, meaning that I had to replenish the Maginot Line every week or so. Although it was tiresome, this wasn’t a major problem because we managed to persuade Kate’s lab to give us all their coffee grounds. More worryingly however, I think the coffee was actually poisoning my runner beans. And as they were the plants I wanted to protect, this was rather self-defeating.

How do I know the coffee was poisoning the beans? I don’t have direct evidence, but my plants were rather pale, spindly things (and one just upped and died), until I stopped giving them coffee (maybe they couldn’t sleep?). Then, from the top down, they started to go a darker green, and indeed flourished (although still behind everyone else I knew who grew runner beans this year). Next year, I’m considering protecting some plants with coffee and others with metaldehyde, to see if it really does make a difference.

Beans

You see? I’m still thinking about experiments.

When I came over from Australia, I spent a bit of time with my parents in Lincoln. There I helped my mother (her of Chilean Potato tree fame) dig the allotment and plant several rows of seed potatoes, aided by my young assistant, Sophie.

Sophie

Much to Sophie’s delight we’ve been eating some of those potatoes for a month, now, and there’s no end in sight (which is good, because the few I planted here won’t keep us in wedgies for very long). But more excitingly, the tomato seedlings my mother gave me did rather well. ‘Excitingly’, because for three bloody years in Sydney I had no luck at all with them.

Tomatoes doing well

I also scored some cucumbers from up North. And this isn’t scientific at all, but I thought it was pretty:

Cucumber

It’s an indication of the length of my personal ‘to-do’ list that, though I managed to see and even review the new movie about Charles Darwin, I’ve only just got around to uploading my photos of the Thames Festival.

Jazz hands

I had planned to wonder and pontificate on the wondrousness of fireworks, and how the heck you you get those beautiful shapes, and stuff like that.

Butterfly

But I’m so tired right now that I think what I’m going to do is link to a site that tells you how to make fireworks,

Vorlons on approach

and simply marvel at the prettiness of it all.

I would like to know how they get some of those effects, though. I found a website that probably tells me—even me!—too much about pyrotechnics (although looking at the writing on that page, I do wonder if they think swine flu is a conspiracy).

Instead, I’m just going to say ‘Oooh’ and ‘Aaah’. And point out that you don’t need a crap camera in an iPhone to get cool effects: sometimes it’s deliberate.

In Soviet Russia, breakfast tweets YOU

I follow a few people on Twitter, from a total of three accounts (which we might class as personal, business and hobby, I guess). Some of them are kind enough to follow me back. And I’ve noticed quite a strange, yet encouraging, phenomenon over the last year or so.

Twitter has moved from being a somewhat banal way of telling the world what you had for breakfast, to a useful tool. It’s used for exchanging thoughts about speakers and what they’re saying at conferences. From a corporate point of view, it can be used to keep customers informed—and more importantly, to listen to what they’re saying about you (that is, according to the self-appointed social media mavens, the third rule or something. I don’t really know. We’re all still learning to use it, notwithstanding what follows). I organized a meeting with a friend I hadn’t seen in four or more years on Tuesday, using Twitter.

It’s Twitter 2.0.

There are several interesting (and useful!) people I’ve met because I have twitter accounts, and recently I’ve been using it to drive traffic to various blogs. At work this week I had to decide whether a banner ad for our contributor site would feature our LinkedIn or Facebook page, or our twitter address. I realized that everything, sooner or later, went through twitter; so that one won (and then our web designer made a rotating banner so the question became moot, but anyway).

The 140 character limit, far from being limiting, has resulted in tremendously inventive ways of processing and aggregating information (it has to be said, helped enormously by http://bit.ly, which comes with built-in stats tools).

Everybody who is anybody is doing it. Only a few years ago people were insisting ‘You must have a website!’: that’s now so obvious that no one says it anymore. We’re not at that stage yet with Twitter, but we will be soon: and then the next new thing will come along (Twitter is already so mainstream that people are making YouTube parodies of Twitter applications. Brilliant).

I love living in the Twenty-first Century. Bring it on.

Jenny’s post just now reminded me, through a maze of twisty mental passages, all alike, that I received a letter from a friend today. Nothing strange about that. What was a little bit strange is that my friend has written a draft of a book—a novel—and is about to start editing it. He’s asked me to take a look in a month or two, and tell him if it’s any good.

Now, before the rest of you start going and getting ideas, I should explain that Nigel is a very good friend, I believe he can write; and I showed him Josh Olson’s rant and only then said I’d do it (this Seussization of that rant is superb, by the way).

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s not because he’s taken a rather startling event from the end of my DPhil as the basis of his plot, nor because it sounds like Lab Lit. I mention it because I’ve been completely crap at writing recently, but for some reason I don’t feel jealous that he’s managed to finish his book first: rather, I am chuffed to pieces and feel spurred to action.

Similarly, I don’t feel jealous of Jenny’s nicely lined-up kit, nor her writing of papers. There is a very slight pang because dammit, I enjoyed doing all that, and I don’t get to do it any more; but most of all I am happy that she and other people here are still doing good science. It makes me happy even if I can’t take a direct part in it (even if she still hasn’t let me come in to split her cells—come to that, SCurry isn’t letting me near his x-ray sets, the tight-fisted barsteward). It’s not jealousy, but rather a vicarious chuffedness. And it inspires me to do more, do better myself.

So, I’m going to have a look at that half-written short story. Straight after I finish worrying about the cicadas in Eva’s recording for the next LabLit podcast…

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The old joke goes that while mothers know their children’s birthdays, shoe sizes, favourite sweets, least favourite foods and names of their best friends; and their best friends’ birthdays, shoe sizes, favourite sweets, least favourite foods and their best friends, fathers are vaguely aware there are small creatures in the house.

Similarly, women are supposedly able to walk, read a newspaper, send text messages and help old ladies across the street while simultaneously reciting their children’s birthdays, shoe sizes, favourite sweets, least favourite foods and names of their best friends. On the other hand, men can just about manage to chew gum without falling over.

‘I’m concentrating on breathing’

Definitely a sexism thing going on there: women can multitask; men can’t. I guess it’s fair enough, given that misogyny is endemic in our culture. But, you see, it’s actually a well-kept secret. As a man, I can say that we can do things like put up shelves, look after the baby and cook dinner all the while listening to the cricket. Truth is, we’d much rather sit and watch the cricket and pretend that we’re stretching our limited resources by knowing exactly how much beer remains in the fridge (just don’t ask us to explain LBW, OK?). We find life a lot easier if we keep people’s expectations low.

Anyway, Jenny twittered today about multitasking. And while I am keen to find out what exactly was going on in her UCL empire, I am also reminded of something that happened to me when I went to work for a little company you’ve probably never even heard of (unless you read this blog).

I realized pretty early on in my graduate career that I couldn’t afford to do just one thing at a time. If I wanted G-actin (prepared from rabbit muscle) purified and labelled and polymerization-competent during the same timeframe that the protein I had to purify from buckets of chicken gizzards (five day prep, ammonium sulphate extraction followed by four columns, all in the coldroom) was going to be stable, I had to do things simultaneously. Especially if I also wanted to make competent cells so that I could clone and express the domain that I was also trying to crystallize before my stipend ran out.

Multitasking seemed pretty normal to me, as well as sensible. My first post-doc was the same: cloning, expressing, growing cells and chopping off the fingers of students who didn’t know how to use computers all had to happen at the same time if the papers were to be published.

It was quite the shock when I got to the company, and was told very early on that I could only work on one project at a time, and shouldn’t interleave experiments. Because, the story went, all the projects would then suffer.

I never did understand that. I did, actually, rather well at that company, getting two projects (the first minor, the second pretty major) to launch and realizing the third was utterly doomed, in three years. So well, that when I stormed out they hired two people to replace me and still spiralled into the ground a year or two later.

When I went back to academia I was straight back into multitasking mode: at any one time I’d be trying to crystallize (or solve by NMR) five different proteins (the chances of any one protein crystallizing are around 10%. But you never know which 10% it’s going to be in advance, and you can never tell when a sodding high throughput structosomic project is going to gazump you. Cock) as well as growing cells and doing nuclear import assays, teaching students how not to poison themselves or anyone else, helping out other members of the lab and running secret projects on the side.

It’s the same in my new job, too. I don’t feel happy unless I’m juggling too many eggs. Not only do I find that I finish multiple tasks ahead of the combined schedule, I also get bored if I have to stick to one thing and one thing only.

So maybe being limited to one project does work for normal people. But for the type of person who likes science? Well, I don’t claim to be normative, and I’d love to hear about your experience. As for me, I go stir crazy if I only have one thing to do.

But don’t ask me to mow the lawn when I’m watching the cricket.

Matt Brown talked about this great city and how about half a million people are involved, one way or another, in science and medicine.

Before I left for Australia, nearly four years ago, I thought I would never want to work, let alone live, in London. Oxford and Cambridge had been the limits of my metropolitan exposure. But three years in Sydney made me realize that I could indeed cope with a city, despite my country boy leanings. Then I came over for the blogging conference last year, and the rest is history.

Quite against all expectation, and perhaps reason, I arrived in London and immediately fell in love. This city; the people; the history; the opportunity: the sheer unbridled life that’s here.

Last weekend (while in Lincoln for my dad’s 65th birthday weekend), and seeing as I had a significant birthday myself this April (and such things should last all year), I also treated myself to a new shiny. And I’ve been playing with it.

Take a look at this wonderful city through my eyes.

I hope to extend the set, and my love affair, as time goes by.

Where’ve you been? Holidays? Harrumph. You young whipper-snappers, why, you don’t know you’re born. In my day, we had to watch endless repeats of Monty Python and the Goodies and like it.

Anyway.

Just over a month ago I related a story about a demonstration of the thermite reaction. You’ll remember, if you care to take your pencil out of your nose, Gee, and pay attention, that a cove by the name of Hogg assisted in this demonstration, very nearly burning down the chemistry lab in the process. Oh do put it away, Rohn. Unless you’ve brought enough for everyone? Didn’t think so.

So, this Hogg character. Not exactly the brightest cookie in the toolshed, but keen. Very keen. Sort of chap who would do something stupidly brave and afterwards wonder what all the fuss was about and what all the ambulances were for. And one of the things about science is that actually, if you’ve got enthusiasm you don’t necessarily have to be all that bright, as long as your creative energies are suitably steered.

Leastways, that’s the charitable explanation for Hogg finding himself in possession of one of the very expensive glass syringes one day in the chemistry lesson, whereas those of us who were more or less guaranteed ‘A’s had to make do with the old, cheap and (critically) unbreakable plastic ones.

That fateful day, we were generating hydrogen by some method which probably involved acid; collecting the gas and measuring how much was produced. Thence—knowing how much stuff we’d started with—we were to quantify the reaction. Or something equally useful. It was another country, and besides, the wench is dead and a long time ago.

So we all had reaction apparatus, a length of tubing, and a graduated syringe with which to collect and measure hydrogen gas. Some of us, as I say, had these plastic, crappy things and others, in what seemed to be gross unfairness, the expensive and accurate glass jobbies. After a certain amount of grumbling, we got down to business—Hogg, naturally, happy as a pig in shit.

Events proceeded according to the laws of nature: gas was produced, measured, and calculations begun.

Well, that’s what should have happened.

Hydrogen gas indeed was produced, and as most of us were peering at the faded black lines on plastic syringes and trying to figure out exactly what ‘e.t2’ meant in cubic centimetres, there was an almighty BANG and a piece of glass went whizzing past my left ear. I turned on the spot, afraid that sudden movement might cause something to fall off. At the other end of the classroom, like a latter day Ozymandias, stood Spencer Hogg: hand outstretched, a smouldering splint in one hand and nothing but whispy smoke in the other.

The boy, miraculously, appeared unharmed.

When we eventually managed to prise Mr Woods from his hiding place in the stock cupboard, we discovered what had happened.

Hogg, all keenness and light, with glass syringe in hand (did I mention how expensive they were?), was desperate to repay the trust placed in him, and, in short, had tried to impress Mr Woods with his extensive knowledge of chemistry. After recording 7.3197 cm ³ precisely , he determined to prove that the gas evolved was indeed hydrogen. So he lit a bunsen, removed the plunger from the syringe, (mixy-mixy, little FAE) and plunged a lit splint into the open end of the syringe barrel, no doubt expecting a genteel ‘pop’.

You can’t blame a kid for trying, I guess.

Earlier today I hugged Eva goodbye and she set off for London Bridge, thence Gatwick and eventually, one hopes, Tronno. She was in London for many reasons, not just to see me and exchange Tweets while seated in my kitchen, about 12 feet away from where I am now.

I’m staying with Richard, and am currently watching him edit a video of interviews he did on Friday night

Unless you’ve been on holiday/living under a rock you’ll probably have heard of the conference with no name: Science Online London (see last year’s account and debrief). This event, which seems to be irrevocably associated in people’s mind with the Borg another ‘Science Online’ conference in the US, took place last Saturday. And you can read all about that in various places, to which I’m not going to link because I can’t be arsed. Well, you could check out the twitter hashtag or Friendfeed (sorry, Eva) room, I guess. Actually, Brian Kelly has an interesting take on preserving all the backchat from the conference and Dave ‘Passport, what passport?’ Munger talks about Second Life.

Where was I? Oh yes.

But the major reason for Eva flying to London was, I like to think, for something that was numerically smaller far more significant in terms of impact, fun, catering, sociability, alcohol consumed and general all-round awesomeness than the official event.

I refer of course to the Fringe Frivolous Unconference, an event so wild, anarchic and hard-hitting that we haven’t been able to standardize the punctuation of the title (which is one reason why Matt’s anagram, ‘Live Roof Surfing’, was so eagerly adopted. By me at least).

Fringe-Frivolous was Jenny‘s brainchild and she was ably assisted by Matt. Food and copious amounts of alcohol (and indeed, the entire venue) were provided by Mendeley—a big shout out to Victor and Cindy for sorting it all.

Jenny has summarized the evening; and Steffi and Eva have also stuck their collective oars in.

However, I’m not going to blog about it. Instead, you may remember me stalking the rooftops with a Flip camera (kindly loaned by Alom Shaha). I’ve edited the clips into a short film that I think captures the essence of the evening perfectly.

Enjoy!

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Shh. Can you hear it? Is it the wind in the trees over Rotherhithe? Is it the gentle sloshing of boats going out with the Thames tide? Is it the steady whine of jet engines en route to City Airport?

Or perhaps it’s flashing of camera bulbs as one of the world’s most famous science bloggers and media luvvies pop stars comes to stay.

It’s hard being famous

Yes, the incomparable Eva Amsen is here, full of gems such as ‘This place looks like Holland’ and ‘Mine’s a pint’. She’s actually staying at my place, along with the giant tomato plants, sickly runner beans, killer lettuce (don’t ask), slug graveyard and over-sized marrows (no, really: don’t ask).

over-sized marrows

I can be this rude about her because she has just collapsed from jetlaggedness and is (hopefully) asleep in the Elder pawn’s bed. I haven’t given her my wireless password so she won’t be able to do anything about this post till the morning. (The Elder Pawn is camping with her aunt in Woolacombe, so don’t worry that Eva is turfing children out onto the street.)

Tomorrow evening we shall go and be Frivolously Fringed on Saturday there’s Science Online. If you want an appointment with her, then let me know (ten quid should do it). Sorry Matt, she’s not coming on the pub crawl ‘cos she can’t hold her liquor.

On Sunday we’ll go see the marshes of London.

Marshes of London