Slaves to Science

[Violet]

When I went to college, I took a Biology class that had a lab last until 10p.m. One of the labs we had to do involved these little guinea pigs and they were kept in a jar made out of glass or plastic. We'd release them in this big open-ended aquarium with hay in it, so they we could record into our journals how they reacted with each other. When the teacher wasn't looking, this one idiot fed their guinea pig some mustard from a packet they got out of their purse ><. And one of the guinea pigs started having sex as well.

But yeah, what kinds of experiments did you have to do in your Biology/Science classes? Do share.

[Doc Rocco]

I do three Science classes so I have done a variety of experiments. I'll share some of my favourites. =D

Human Biology
Mostly dissections. Our most recent one was of a sheep's heart which was really interesting. All the blood vessels, the different chambers of the heart and the tendons were all intact so the dissection was very good. We've also looked at enzymes and food content.

Chemistry
Seeing as though it's Chem, we do all manner of experiments. Today, we were testing the solubility of ionic salts. My partner and I were testing Chromium (III) Chloride which is meant to be sparingly soluble. So far we've put 30g of the stuff into solution and the solution isn't saturated yet. Hmmm.

Experiments on catalysts are always interesting. Cobalt sulphate + hydrogen peroxide (I think) makes a lovely pink foamy explosion, we've made aerogel, touch powder from ammonium and iodine, and made a hydrogen bomb. The latter involves filling an octahedral thing with Hydrogen by reacting zinc with sulphuric acid. Then the end of the thing we filled has a match lit at a small opening at the end which eventually burns down causing a huge boom. It's teh awesomes.

Physics
Experiments using mirrors to burn things, using lenses to produce images, making thermometers, ticker timers, using a Geiger Counter and exploring half lives of radioisotopes using M&Ms. The last one is the most fun.

[Meier Link]

In biology (back 9 years ago) we mainly did disections too. Started out with simple things like worms and frogs and before we knew it we were disecting ferrets. It was rather interesting and most people where discusted. But then again there where alot of animals/ parts of animals in jars around that same room for years. Hell the teacher kept her lunch in the freezer right next to the frozen goods if you catch my drift. Figure people would of been use to gross stuff after seeing it for 4 years.

[Walter Sobchak]

In my biology class, we went to a pond and looked at samples. It was so fun that I caught a staph infection and had to get my face drained by a doctor who was very cruel and unusual.

[Heyzeus Kreyest]

One time I did an experiment where I tried to make a frog-squirrel hybrid my sewing them together. I named my creation Lucky.

Lucky died about 2 hours after the procedure. Made a mess of my basement. This wasn't a class thing, just a personal project, but it was still in the name of SCIENCE.

[T.G. Oskar]

Man, I envy Rocco. He gets to play with making "Hydrogen Bombs" and I never, ever got to make even an inch of ethanol (which, for those who have no idea, means making rum. Or whiskey. Or any kind of alcohol)

I must say my favorite experiment has got to be with polymers. It was to prove the qualities of polymers, but it was awesome to test the qualities of cornstarch with a liberal amount of water. Then, we mixed two compounds to make a polymer. It's a shame I can't remember the compound right now...I think I still have the process out there.

Physics-wise, the idea of playing with small cars to test collisions was quite interesting. That was a set of tests using the same cars, to test a variety of collisions. Oh, and dealing with makeshift capacitors and understanding a bit of basic circuits.

Still...we did worked with the basics of distillation. IMO, recrystallization is more entertaining, but distillation is one of the crucial things to learn.

...where's the alembics when we need them?

[auron328]

we tried to clone plasmids that make ecoli antibiotic resistant. nobody's worked. and no one knew why.

[Rocky]

I got to do quite a few lab stuff during H.S. and College, so I'll fill you in on a few things.

Back in my chemistry class, we had an advanced Forensics unit a few years back that allowed us to basically have like a CSI unit in class. One of the first things that happened was everyone had to make a fake alias name and not tell anyone who it was. Next, our teacher made up a giant story that somehow had all of the characters involved and we had to find out who was who using our forensics techniques that we learned about earlier in the semester. For our final, we had one class period to make a report on the whole story, what happened, and who was who in our class and the proof that they were who they were. (For example, my "Rocky" alias was compromised when they found out that Rocky had the same fingerprints as me IRL, so therefore they could prove that and write it down in class.) It was easily one of the best and most fun classes that I took, ever.

Back in Physics for high school, we had what was called a "Physics Triathalon", where there were three seperate events throughout the year that all the Physics students participated and competed against each other. There was a structures unit, an egg cart unit, and a giant rocket unit.

The structures unit was when we had to make a structure out of balsa wood that could hold the most amount of weight, and got judged in other areas as well, like size, weight, originality, etc. We each had partners, and even though me and my partner were by far the worst out of everyone in the class, we ended up getting the top 20 record of all time in number of points, which because of that clause, automatically got us a 100% for the lab! It was mostly due to our "original" structure along with a perfect weight prediction estimate that got us a ton of points.

The next unit was with the egg carts. Whatever cart that fit within the weight/length/height limits that could go the fastest into a wall while still holding on to two eggs and not breaking them wins. We got a fairly decent score, but our cart was large and heavy, so we scored low on points. One of my friends made this crazy cart that was small, and had a funny little purple carriage thing that held the eggs. It had a cute little ceiling thing that was made just for originality. Funny thing was, once the cart smashed into the wall at high speeds, the car flipped over backwards, and the ceiling prevented the eggs from even cracking! They won the cart thing by far.

Last was the rocket unit. same thing, student-made rockets get pressurized and launched up into the sky. The ones that stayed in the air for a long time while catching a lot of air were able to get a lot of points. Now, by this time, it was the middle of spring, my senior year, I was ready to get out of school. So, the night before, I bought a two-liter of mountain dew and drank it all that night, attached some cardboard wings to it, and called it good. Funny enough, I end up doing one of the best in the class, since everyone else made theirs all fancy and heavy and couldn't get theirs to go high at all.

As for College biology and stuff, we got to do the good ole Cadaver lab. Pretty cool stuff, though some of the ones that were weak at heart couldn't stand it and left the room promptly. I enjoyed it! We also got to dissect a bunch of animals when we got to the animal unit. One in particular that I remembered was dissecting a starfish. I don't know what it was, but it had this absolutely gross formaldehyde odor or something that just reeked when we cut it open. My lab partner jumped back when he cut it open! I lean forward and say "are you...holy balls what the hell is that?!" My eyes instantly teared up and I had to stand up after that. It was only our starfish that did that to us, all the others were fine for the rest of the class.

[Sinister]

It's funny how little I want to talk about them. >< I guess cause I appreciate that this place is separate from those experiments.

But I created seedless watermelons by the addition of colchicine to produce a tetraploid plant(plant with double the normal amount of chromosomes). After that, we bred the plant back, producing a triploid watermelon plant that was sterile.

I tried, successfully, to affect the growth of a Radish plant with IAA, (indole-3-acetic acid) which is an auxin or plant growth hormone, without killing it.

I also engineered a black tulip. And Hybridized two of my Dendrobiums and got a very cool plant ^^


I'm sure I've done tens of hundreds of others, but those are recent and fresh to mind.

-Sin

[Raider]

One time I did an experiment where I tried to make a frog-squirrel hybrid my sewing them together. I named my creation Lucky.

Lucky died about 2 hours after the procedure. Made a mess of my basement. This wasn't a class thing, just a personal project, but it was still in the name of SCIENCE.

dude your sick

[Treize]

One time I did an experiment where I tried to make a frog-squirrel hybrid my sewing them together. I named my creation Lucky.

Lucky died about 2 hours after the procedure. Made a mess of my basement. This wasn't a class thing, just a personal project, but it was still in the name of SCIENCE.

I really hope that was some sort of joke.

When I had Biology, my class did a lot of dissections too. I wish we would have looked at a more variety of animals. We mainly focused on rats, worms, ect. I found it pretty interesting, but I think I like Chemistry labs more.

[ChloChloAriadne]

And one of the guinea pigs started having sex as well.

...ONE of the guinea pigs started having sex?

I didn't know they masturbate ^^;


Anyway, we haven't done much interesting at all. Dissected the heart and lungs of a sheepie, and dissected.. Um, a flower. Lily may remember us looking and looking for the flower's ovaries before realising it was a boy flower. *eyeroll*. Also, a liver, but that was boring.

[Aerif]

...ONE of the guinea pigs started having sex?

I didn't know they masturbate ^^;

Apparently science proves that babies also participate in that activity. If guinea pigs did, would anyone really be surprised?

Anyways...

Chemistry
The best thing we ever did in chemistry was create esters, a blend of acid and alcohol that makes artificial smells used in sweets and various other things. The ones I made smelled like pear drops

Physics
Physics is boring. Period. The most fun we had in Physics was messing around with the Vaan De Graaf machine, that creates static electricity and makes hairs stand on end. Wee! Fun!