benchwork

Wearing Gloves?

You wear gloves at the bench for one of two reasons: Either to protect YOU from your experiment, or to protect your experiment from you. (Okay, sometimes it's both at the same time.) In any case, gloved hands should never touch your face, arms, skin, or cell phone.

You can wash and dry gloved hands (or use ethanol on them) to clean as needed. However, before you do, ask your research advisor for guidelines so you always make the safe choice. In some cases, it's better to discard the gloves and get a fresh pair.

Hinge Up, Down, or Random?

When placing your tubes in the microcentrifuge, If your research supervisor doesn’t have a preference, then always place the tubes hinge up. If you develop this habit, it might serve you well--depending on the type of research you do.

For example, if you have a pellet after the spin, you’ll always know that it will be opposite the hinge*. If instead of a pellet, you have a streak of material on the side of the tube, you'll know which side to avoid when pipetting off excess liquid.

One Bad Lab Habit to Avoid

Hands down, one of the more boring parts of research is the prep work.

Who wants to check if there is ligase, sterile flasks, or enough 5M sodium chloride? In truth, no one does. It’s infinitely more satisfying to get started on the pipetting, mixing, separating, vortexing, or spinning and plan to grab what you need when you need it.

a photo of three petri dishes with dead material in them. The result of a failed experiment.

Lab Cell Phone Tip #3: When Something Doesn't Look Right

Note: This tip won't work for all research environments. In some labs, there is no-phone policy. Usually, it's because the work being done is easily compromised by having a phone around (because the phone cannot be sterilized) or because having a phone distracts the researcher in a way that is a safety hazard. So, this tip only applies to students who have discussed the lab's cell phone policy with their in-lab mentor or PI, and are allowed to use the phone.

Even Water Needs a Label

Establishing good habits at the bench ensures that you don't have to remember all the little details and can focus on the big picture of your experiment. So, label everything during an experiment. Even if it's just a tube of water, and even if you'll only need it for a few minutes.

Read the Troubleshooting Section Before You Need It

Every research kit contains a protocol manual with a troubleshooting section that explains the most common mistakes made with the kit at the research bench. If the kit procedure fails, the first thing most scientists do is turn to the troubleshooting section to determine if the reason could have been Operator Error.