Day in the Lab

This is what I going to deem a "Mom Post." Meaning, my Mom is probably the only person who will enjoy reading this. So if you're not my Mom just scan the pictures to see if anything looks interesting. The only reason I write this post is to look back at years down the road and remember what I did in grad school.

Part of my thesis involves using radioactive fructose. By using radioactive fructose I can apply it to the plants and then use machines to detect the radioactivity and thus determine if it is in the plant or where exactly it is in the plant. Radioactive particles give off a certain energy that is detectable that allows it to be used as a tracer. Through various methods such as washing, combusting, metabolizing, 14C samples can be collected into small vials filled with liquid scintillation cocktail solution. This scintillation cocktail gives off small flashes of lights when in the presence of radioactive particles. I then put the vials in a Liquid Scintillation Counter which takes each vial and counts the flashes. This gives us a numerical value of radioactivity. If we know how much we put on the plant, then we can say what percentage is in each location. There's a lot more to it, but this is the simple version. Thanks for reading Mom.

I was running some samples in the lab this morning and decided to take a picture of it. This is the Liquid Scintillation Counter.