• Question: Do you use scientific equipment for your reaserch?

    Asked by to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Yup! I use alot of different type of microscopes to look at cancer cells up close and see whats happening inside them. I also use lots of smaller machines to help me work out what’s inside the cell.

    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I need to use quite a lot of cool scientific equipment from robots to Xray beams!

      I need to purify the protein that I work on and to that I used a sophisticated, automated set of pumps connected to various solution. Its all computer controlled so it is quite easy to use.

      Once I have my protein I use a robot to help me make better use of it. The robot can dispense samples 10time less than I can do myself. This let me do 10times the number experiments.

      The most elaborate bit of science equipment I use is at an ultra-bright X-ray source in the Oxfordshire countryside. Here a series of robot automatically handle my sample and collect my data to minimise my exposures to X-rays.

      And this is all in addition to the measuring tubes, test tubes, pipettes, petri dishes and beakers that you might have come across in you science classes.

      It’s always lots of fun!

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Hi not a research scientist! But I work ins hospital lab diagnosing cancer. In the histopathology laboratory we use lots of equipment. The bigger pieces or equipment included processing machines that treat tissue samples with chemical to prepare them to be cut into very thin sections for microscopic examination. After the tissue has been processed its embedded at an embedding centre. A biomedical scientist embeds the tissue into wax blocks so they can be cut on a microtome. The microtome is used to cut thin tissue sections that are floated out on a water bath and scooped up onto a glass slide. The slides are then stained on an automated staining machine and cover slipped on an automated cover slipper. Slides are then looked at down light microscopes.

      Another piece of important equipment is the immuno stained this is used to stain tissue sections with specific antibodies to identify certain types of tumours to confirm diagnoses. Please see my profile for some pictures.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      I am jealous of Amar’s robots and Andrea’s slide stainer – I have to stain my slides by hand!
      My favourite pieces of equipment in the lab are my cell counter – which counts the number of cells in a sample and tells me how many are alive in less than 30 seconds (it takes a lot longer without), and the ultracentrifuge – which I use to purify viruses by spinning samples around at 65,000 turns per minute. When something is spinning that fast even the air can get in the way and slow it down so we have to remove all of the air from inside first and when the machine gets up to speed it sounds a bit like an aeroplane taking off!

    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      I’ve used lots of equipment to do research. My favourite was the confocal microscope – which uses lasers to take detailed pictures of cancer cells. You can stain different molecules of the cells with dyes that give off fluorescence when you shine a laser on them, allowing you to see things in the cell that you can’t see with the naked eye.

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