Apparently, like the “zee phenomenon”, only in North America, specifically the United States, is “tidbit” the preferred spelling. Evidently this escapes the spell check mechanism on this forum, which red-marks “tidbit” and proffers “titbit” as corrective, though either is considered acceptable, especially if one is posting from the USA…
BTW, did anyone else know that “tidbits” is actually spelt “titbits”?
Looks like a French dictionary which would explain a lot.
We could make our own spectrophotometer…
Hell yeah! what’s stoppin’ ya? Oh yea, the usual list: time money time & money
I have recently used a spectrophotometer in my Biology lab and it is sourced from an educational products company which offers it at a relatively attractive price point and will give you a graphical
wavelength distribution.
and it helps to own the LoggerPro 3 software if you get a non-graphical interface but you can use the free Logger Lite download now. Also some are designed to work with an iPad / iPhone / iAnnoy / Android device.
It takes training and skill to use a tool, especially a tool like a spectrophotometer. I could manage simple experiments determining elemental composition, but I can’t do more sophisticated stuff.
I am not sure they are not “Screaming Yellow Zonkers”, but from the photos of those I have unearthed they look like carmel corn so…
no. Don’t think that’s it.
Maybe my google-fu is off?
mmmmnope. doesn’t look like this…
It takes training and skill to use a tool, especially a tool like a spectrophotometer. I could manage simple experiments determining elemental composition, but I can’t do more sophisticated stuff.
Okay, you have my curiosity aroused since I have found an SP to be one of the simplest analytical instruments I have laid my hands on. This particular model is used by high schoolers. You measure either transmittance or absorbance against a reference sample and apply Beer’s Law. What kind of sophisticated processes are you referring to?
If you are talking about Raman, SERS or FT-IR, then I could see what you are saying, but I’ve worked with those as well and the learning curve isn’t too bad. Operating a full scale transmission electron microscope on the other hand, is a real SOB. If you can master one of those, your next step up is to train on a commercial airliner.
I am not kidding.
Learning sample prep alone for one of those can take upwards of a year to master. Then there are techniques like STEM, Diffraction Contrast, Phase Contrast, Cryo, EELS, Liquid TEM, etc.
Making sense of one’s results. It’s one thing to get a graph; it’s another to know what it means. For simple things, maybe not such a problem; then, again, you could often just use a candle test for simple things.
They just announced a $49 version for home use as well.
I’d hoped we might get a full developers suite donated, but when they came out to the space to meet with us, the reception we gave them was less than warm. ( One individual spent the entire meeting telling them what was wrong with LabVIEW and the Virtual Bench hardware they’d brought along. )
Rather an unfortunate approach to guys that came out after work on their own time to show us their products.
On the spectroscopy side, I rather like Auger and SXAPS myself. Worked in the then ETSU Surface Physics Lab back in college. Neither of those will work on the Mysterious Vacuum Cleaner Sample above though. Outgassing would be killer. And cleaning crumbs out of the spectrometer vacuum chambers would be a pain…
Kind of why I don’t too often involve the general DMS membership in discussions with potential benefactors. They cannot help themselves from shooting themselves in the foot.
I have several vernierr pro sensors that I can use with an arduino using a shield sold by spark fun. Has interfaces for both digital and analog sensors.
In biology, you can track enzymatic action over time and compare different reaction rates with variations in temperature, pH, competitive inhibitors, etc. In microbiology, you are not using an x-axis time scale but a microorganism in liquid suspension concentration level based on turbidity. Again, in both cases you need a reference - for microorganisms you do a parallel colony plate count for equivalency.
As for the flame test, I think I see where you are going with that. That is the old style prism with a diffraction grating that was used to get an elemental analysis in a candle flame.
That is a somewhat different sort of spectrometry as it is not the % of absorbance/transmittance over a range of wavelengths, but the spectral emission of light itself. Vernier has another model designed to do that as well.
They just announced a $49 version for home use as well.
Todd, I looked that up and see some references to that, but National Instruments has rather… labyrinthine purchasing channel. Could you please supply a link?
I’d hoped we might get a full developers suite donated, but when they
came out to the space to meet with us, the reception we gave them was
less than warm. ( One individual spent the entire meeting telling them
what was wrong with LabVIEW and the Virtual Bench hardware they’d
brought along. ) Rather an unfortunate approach to guys that came out after work on their own time to show us their products.
Agreed.
Whatever misgivings there are, legitimate or otherwise, it is better to be gracious and professional - particularly when they are taking the time to come to us.
SXAPS
Now that is a pretty exotic surface analysis technique - in Google there are only a shade over 6,000 hits. What are the advantages over regular XPS?
Outgassing would be killer.
That is the advantage of Raman - it will work in atmosphere and it is fairly good for organic materials.
I have several vernierr pro sensors that I can use with an arduino using a shield sold by spark >fun. Has interfaces for both digital and analog sensors.
Walter, I have the Arduino shield as well for Vernier, but I am not familiar with Pro Sensor reference. Did you mean Go! Sensor?
Plus, I don’t trust med students to make a cup o’ noodles…
I have also found that most doctors and many pre-meds make terrible physicists / procedural technicians. I was more referring to research lab rat types that are into biotech /medical bionanotechnology as they tend to be a different breed. Biomedical engineering is yet another story entirely and who you could probably trust for noodle making as they are “closer to the ground” with respect to hands on ability.
Then there was this Japanese doctoral candidate TA in my first OCHEM lab a few years back.
She was GOOD.
Laconic, utterly confident, and could fix a apparatus issue like I think about it. She would observe someone struggling with their experiment, would walk over, nudge it with with some Jedi Fu glassware power and just float off to another part of the lab like a visual haiku.
JAG “Member of the Green Acrylic Thieves Guild” MAN
The main advantage as I recall is that the hardware is a LOT simpler and hence cheaper. It’s also directly complimentary to the Auger machine we had - the two processes are complementary in the energy ranges we looked at. We got a Perkin Elmer XPS machine on a grant my senior year or so. Never got to work on it much. Very nice machine though.
AWESOOOME! I daresay I think you nailed it! Excellent work, Detective! I gotta say, every store I’ve been through I have been scanning the “cheesy poofs” like never before. Thank you for solving that.
