January 18, 2012
Today was our last day of WISE and my last blog! We mostly just worked on my presentation once again, and I was able to ask any last questions that I had. I asked about little things that I needed a little bit of clarification about so I wouldn't present it wrong for the presentation. I worked on my presentation for about two hours. He helped me find other pictures that I could use, and he gave me some ideas about how I could expand my presentation. Then we made one last gradient that one of the people in his lab needed for their project. It was just really cool how much easier it was to make the gradient now than it was in the beginning of the semester. It was really strange that it was the last time I would ever be in the lab!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Day 26
Tuesday January 17, 2012
This was my last day working at the Homewood Campus! Once again, all we did today was work on our presentations. JM helped Seung Ha while I worked by myself. A lot of the time though JM had to help another person in his lab with their project, so mostly Seung Ha and I were alone in the lab working on our presentations. It was actually very nice to be given that much time to work on it because it relieved a lot of my stress. I mostly worked on the written report and the notecards that I'm going to use when presenting my powerpoint. I pretty much almost finished the written part which was great. Sorry this is really short but that pretty much summed up my day!
This was my last day working at the Homewood Campus! Once again, all we did today was work on our presentations. JM helped Seung Ha while I worked by myself. A lot of the time though JM had to help another person in his lab with their project, so mostly Seung Ha and I were alone in the lab working on our presentations. It was actually very nice to be given that much time to work on it because it relieved a lot of my stress. I mostly worked on the written report and the notecards that I'm going to use when presenting my powerpoint. I pretty much almost finished the written part which was great. Sorry this is really short but that pretty much summed up my day!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Day 25
Wednesday January 10, 2012
We didn't do much on Wednesday. For most of the time, JM helped Seung Ha with her project while I was able to do my work. This was all we did for the first two hours. He wanted to make sure that we could actually do a little bit today, so he let us decide what we wanted to do. We chose that we wanted to work with liquid nitrogen again. I've said this in a previous blog but the liquid nitrogen is really cool because the gas is denser than air, so the gas sinks to the ground. Previously, he has showed us how to freeze the liquid nitrogen. This time, he showed us how to thaw it. All that he did was place a small tube of it into a water bath and whirl it around until it unfroze. Then he placed it into a machine to see the size of the particles. The particles ended up being a bit larger than what he expected. They were around 80 nanometers while he expected them to be around 50 or 60 nanometers. I know it's not much but this was all we really did today.
We didn't do much on Wednesday. For most of the time, JM helped Seung Ha with her project while I was able to do my work. This was all we did for the first two hours. He wanted to make sure that we could actually do a little bit today, so he let us decide what we wanted to do. We chose that we wanted to work with liquid nitrogen again. I've said this in a previous blog but the liquid nitrogen is really cool because the gas is denser than air, so the gas sinks to the ground. Previously, he has showed us how to freeze the liquid nitrogen. This time, he showed us how to thaw it. All that he did was place a small tube of it into a water bath and whirl it around until it unfroze. Then he placed it into a machine to see the size of the particles. The particles ended up being a bit larger than what he expected. They were around 80 nanometers while he expected them to be around 50 or 60 nanometers. I know it's not much but this was all we really did today.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Day 24
January 10, 2012
All we did today was work on my presentation, but it was EXTREMELY helpful and took a lot of stress off of me. Kellin helped me through all of the questions that need to be answered. Then, he helped me find important pictures that would be useful in the powerpoint. Meanwhile, I put the powerpoint together by placing the information of the correct slide. I also was able to begin working on my written report. Even though I've been working on the same project for almost an entire semester, his reiteration of all the details really helped clarify the little confusing parts that I've always thought were a bit abstruse to me. He helped me work on my presentation all up until it was time to go.
All we did today was work on my presentation, but it was EXTREMELY helpful and took a lot of stress off of me. Kellin helped me through all of the questions that need to be answered. Then, he helped me find important pictures that would be useful in the powerpoint. Meanwhile, I put the powerpoint together by placing the information of the correct slide. I also was able to begin working on my written report. Even though I've been working on the same project for almost an entire semester, his reiteration of all the details really helped clarify the little confusing parts that I've always thought were a bit abstruse to me. He helped me work on my presentation all up until it was time to go.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Day 23
January 4, 2012
I did not write a post for yesterday because I did not do anything because my mentor was not there.
Today we worked with polymers and experimented to find the best way to make a sphere shaped cell. Polymers are mulitple positively charged monomers put together. Polymers have little legs on them called PEGs. PEGs aprevent negatively charged nanoparticles from clinging to the polymer and clump together. However, the more PEGs, the more worm-shaped the polymer is. We want to make the polymer sphere though because sphere shaped polymers last longer when injected into the blood. The sphere shape copes better with the flow of blood cells then the worm shape does. So the question is how many PEGs have to be cut off from the polymer in order to make it spherical but to keep enough PEGs on to prevent other particles from clinging with the polymer? This is what we are trying to find out. It will take several trials to finally figure it out. We just did one trial today. JM made a polymer and then placed them into a syringe. The syringe very rapidly spins the nanoparticles in order to change their shape. After about a half hour, we placed the particles into a different machine that calculates the number and size of the nanoparticles. Apparently, the polymer nanoparticles ended up being a little too be. Each was 170 nanometers big but we were hoping for about 60 or 70 nanometers. This may have meant that the particles hadn't completely changed into a spherical shape yet and are still in the worm form. We didn't have enough time to do another trial, so we talked about the presentation for a few minutes. Even though I will not be presenting on this project, we discussed how he thinks we should make our powerpoints and how to prepare for the oral presentation.
I did not write a post for yesterday because I did not do anything because my mentor was not there.
Today we worked with polymers and experimented to find the best way to make a sphere shaped cell. Polymers are mulitple positively charged monomers put together. Polymers have little legs on them called PEGs. PEGs aprevent negatively charged nanoparticles from clinging to the polymer and clump together. However, the more PEGs, the more worm-shaped the polymer is. We want to make the polymer sphere though because sphere shaped polymers last longer when injected into the blood. The sphere shape copes better with the flow of blood cells then the worm shape does. So the question is how many PEGs have to be cut off from the polymer in order to make it spherical but to keep enough PEGs on to prevent other particles from clinging with the polymer? This is what we are trying to find out. It will take several trials to finally figure it out. We just did one trial today. JM made a polymer and then placed them into a syringe. The syringe very rapidly spins the nanoparticles in order to change their shape. After about a half hour, we placed the particles into a different machine that calculates the number and size of the nanoparticles. Apparently, the polymer nanoparticles ended up being a little too be. Each was 170 nanometers big but we were hoping for about 60 or 70 nanometers. This may have meant that the particles hadn't completely changed into a spherical shape yet and are still in the worm form. We didn't have enough time to do another trial, so we talked about the presentation for a few minutes. Even though I will not be presenting on this project, we discussed how he thinks we should make our powerpoints and how to prepare for the oral presentation.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Day 21
December 7, 2011
Today we did an experiment but I'm not exactly sure what the name of it was. We've done it before. It was a little tedious but it was interesting. The goal was the take this positively charged nanoparticle and place it in a cell. The significance of this process was that the nanoparticle was a polymer with DNA as opposed to a neutral polymer. This nanoparticle is able to produce a lot more Luciferase. Luciferase is apparently good for the body which was why it was the goal for the experiment. Then we added on to that experiment to calculate the data of how much luciferase was actually produced. We started with 100ml of Luciferase. Then we added 20ml of DNA, mixed the two together, and then placed the tube that contained the mixture into this machine that quickly calculated the amount. We did several trials. But all the trials ended up for some reason not working. Every trial showed a very miniscule amount of Luciferase which was not supposed to happen. JM thinks that maybe the cells had gone bad somehow. He said that the cells originally looked strange in the beginning, so that might have been the reason why the experiment didn't work. Of course it's a little upsetting when the experiment that you're working on for hours doesn't work, but it's unavoidable and it will continue to happen. That was pretty much all we did today.
Today we did an experiment but I'm not exactly sure what the name of it was. We've done it before. It was a little tedious but it was interesting. The goal was the take this positively charged nanoparticle and place it in a cell. The significance of this process was that the nanoparticle was a polymer with DNA as opposed to a neutral polymer. This nanoparticle is able to produce a lot more Luciferase. Luciferase is apparently good for the body which was why it was the goal for the experiment. Then we added on to that experiment to calculate the data of how much luciferase was actually produced. We started with 100ml of Luciferase. Then we added 20ml of DNA, mixed the two together, and then placed the tube that contained the mixture into this machine that quickly calculated the amount. We did several trials. But all the trials ended up for some reason not working. Every trial showed a very miniscule amount of Luciferase which was not supposed to happen. JM thinks that maybe the cells had gone bad somehow. He said that the cells originally looked strange in the beginning, so that might have been the reason why the experiment didn't work. Of course it's a little upsetting when the experiment that you're working on for hours doesn't work, but it's unavoidable and it will continue to happen. That was pretty much all we did today.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Day 20
December 6, 2011
It was a very interesting day! We started with cell culture. I've been this before also in my Wednesday lab. It was interesting that they use similar techniques for completely different purposes. It was fun because Kellin let me do the entire procedure while he just told me what to do. We put 2mL of media (a mixture of chemicals and cells) into a tube and then placed it in an incubator for 10 minutes. Then we placed the tube in a centrifuge. The centrifuge rapidly spins the tube around which somehow makes all the cells settle to the bottom of the tube. We brought the tube back into the hood and removed the remaining solution but left the cells in the bottom. We placed 4ml of new media into the tube with cells and pipetted through several times to chop the cells and mix them with the media. Then we moved the solution into a different container that we could place under the microscope. Once we finished that, we made another gel gradient. While we were waiting for the gel to harden, he and the rest of the lab were just playing around with dry ice. He showed me what would happen if he put a frozen cube of CO2 in room temperature water. It boiled and looked like fog. It was really cool. Then he explained that if you place a small amount of water in a syringe and reduce the pressure enoughm the water will boil at room temperature! He attempted trying this but ultimately failed. He told me that boiling points differ depending on the altitude. In Denver which is high in the mountains, water has a lower boiling point and it takes a longer amount of time to boil something there. Then, Ms. Rein came to visit my lab for a few minutes. But it was ashame because we had already finished everything we wanted to do that day, so Ms. Rein didn't get to see me do anything.
It was a very interesting day! We started with cell culture. I've been this before also in my Wednesday lab. It was interesting that they use similar techniques for completely different purposes. It was fun because Kellin let me do the entire procedure while he just told me what to do. We put 2mL of media (a mixture of chemicals and cells) into a tube and then placed it in an incubator for 10 minutes. Then we placed the tube in a centrifuge. The centrifuge rapidly spins the tube around which somehow makes all the cells settle to the bottom of the tube. We brought the tube back into the hood and removed the remaining solution but left the cells in the bottom. We placed 4ml of new media into the tube with cells and pipetted through several times to chop the cells and mix them with the media. Then we moved the solution into a different container that we could place under the microscope. Once we finished that, we made another gel gradient. While we were waiting for the gel to harden, he and the rest of the lab were just playing around with dry ice. He showed me what would happen if he put a frozen cube of CO2 in room temperature water. It boiled and looked like fog. It was really cool. Then he explained that if you place a small amount of water in a syringe and reduce the pressure enoughm the water will boil at room temperature! He attempted trying this but ultimately failed. He told me that boiling points differ depending on the altitude. In Denver which is high in the mountains, water has a lower boiling point and it takes a longer amount of time to boil something there. Then, Ms. Rein came to visit my lab for a few minutes. But it was ashame because we had already finished everything we wanted to do that day, so Ms. Rein didn't get to see me do anything.
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