pwned experiments

"When I first joined my lab, I saw the 'No Smurfs!' sign on the lab microwave (the microwave used for experiments, not food). I thought it was kind of lame, in a hipster-kitsch kind of way. But then I opened it for the first time a few weeks later, and I understood:


(BTW, the blue is coomassie stain, for staining protein gels)."

"After watching me kill 100 billion E. coli by micro-fluidization, the surviving bacteria said, 'we love you.' Are they mocking me?"

"I have a long and storied history of failing amazingly at acrylamide gels. Usually it's only the sequence-length ones that do creative things; the little protein gels generally treat me pretty well. At first, the gel appears fine. However, [given perspective], you will see that I have, once again, succeeded in creatively failing. No, I am not some giantess of extremely large proportions. Yes, my PI was less than thrilled. On the plus side, this is likely the cutest thing I ever will accomplish in lab. And, if I could reliably reproduce it (but what scientist can reliably reproduce results, right?), I could probably quit my day job and make and sell them as little science-nerd pins or something. Alas, attempts to reproduce this have, of course, failed. Yay, science!"

"I was taking a sequence of photographs of a slow reaction in several wells on a spot plate and inserted a time point by writing the time (2:45) on a piece of tape and photographing that as a part of the sequence. The camera was mounted such that the image was inverted, a fact I didn't notice until I was reviewing the sequence with my group."

"I have no idea why, but all four of my bacterial pellets spontaneously formed happy faces of some random dark material. I have no idea how this happened, but I'm taking it as a good omen!"

"This is the current state of an ultracentrifuge down the hall. I have no idea how it happened, but I guess it's a reminder to always balance your tubes. I also like how the tape says "do not use," as if otherwise someone would just brush aside the debris, put in their rotor, and proceed. "