Refrigerators and Relativity
Yesterday I received permission from my old research advisor to snoop around in her lab and find some stuff to use for my current research project. (I'm targeting the same disease as last summer (equine sarcoids which are thought to be caused be bovine papilloma viruses 1 or 2) but have a different approach in mind.)
It was kind of strange being in there. Not much has been done in the lab since I left it last fall - it was moved to a new room, but my tubes of extracted plasmid were still in the refrigerator's freezer, some tubes of old polymerase chain reactions (I don't know how they escaped my clean up last fall) graced a rack in the refrig - there was even an old bottle of cell culture media bearing my initials (it should have been gone long ago).
Maybe this is just slightly like the theory of relativity (I'm practicing my eastern thinking here). In a way, both I and the lab refrigerator have experienced the same period of time, but in a way it could seem like we haven't. The refrigerator is like the astronaut who goes into outerspace and exceeds the speed of light. Little time seems to pass, and the astronaut accomplishes little and changes little. He then reconoitres with the earth bound (myself in this instance), who has been through and accomplished much (comparatively) and aged to some degree.
Today I tried to cool a solution in a beaker using hot water. I was at it for a while before I realized the hot water spigot actually resulted in hot water.
I finished reading "The Fisherman's Lady" early this morning. Author George MacDonald had good insight into the workings of people's minds. He also used some delightful metaphors, and created colorful characters (like Miss Horn who tended to state, when some emotional subject or occasion arose, that she was glad she was a woman without feelings - it obviously wasn't true). The book was too dramatic/contained too many unusual occurences to have been real, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
Ah, tonight I am going to BK's for a grand old girls sleepover. Tomorrow I may go hiking with CS and some other Bible Mennonite Fellowship youths.
It was kind of strange being in there. Not much has been done in the lab since I left it last fall - it was moved to a new room, but my tubes of extracted plasmid were still in the refrigerator's freezer, some tubes of old polymerase chain reactions (I don't know how they escaped my clean up last fall) graced a rack in the refrig - there was even an old bottle of cell culture media bearing my initials (it should have been gone long ago).
Maybe this is just slightly like the theory of relativity (I'm practicing my eastern thinking here). In a way, both I and the lab refrigerator have experienced the same period of time, but in a way it could seem like we haven't. The refrigerator is like the astronaut who goes into outerspace and exceeds the speed of light. Little time seems to pass, and the astronaut accomplishes little and changes little. He then reconoitres with the earth bound (myself in this instance), who has been through and accomplished much (comparatively) and aged to some degree.
Today I tried to cool a solution in a beaker using hot water. I was at it for a while before I realized the hot water spigot actually resulted in hot water.
I finished reading "The Fisherman's Lady" early this morning. Author George MacDonald had good insight into the workings of people's minds. He also used some delightful metaphors, and created colorful characters (like Miss Horn who tended to state, when some emotional subject or occasion arose, that she was glad she was a woman without feelings - it obviously wasn't true). The book was too dramatic/contained too many unusual occurences to have been real, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
Ah, tonight I am going to BK's for a grand old girls sleepover. Tomorrow I may go hiking with CS and some other Bible Mennonite Fellowship youths.
posted by Claire at 16:43
1 Comments:
I'm glad you went today. You added alot!
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