And the real side of research begins. After spending last week preparing samples we finally began running a crystallization experiment on Tuesday. It takes 48 for the induction time. Today when we went in to check the data my mentor declared the experiment a failure as dissipation and frequency should be inversely proportional but were coming up as proportional for some reason. Once we went to investigate we discovered that the machine is leaking internally!!! So needless to say my mentor is not happy and we are now spending the afternoon discussing with the tech at Qsense how to correct the problem. YAY science!
EEEKk!! Do you have a backup plan if the machine cannot be fixed quickly?
Oh no! Is there another machine that you can use in the meantime? I bet your mentor is super unhappy.
Well there is a similar machine in another lab so my mentor is checking if we can use that machine to accomplish our goals. Our machine has a broken plate and so far the techs at Qsense cannot figure out how to fix it. It is a 50/50 the machine has to be sent back……
Sorry to here about the malfunction. Luckily it was only 2 days. I once spent 6 months collecting data only to find out that I had missed a critical factor in my hypothesis and the data showed completely the opposite of what I thought. Had to start over and collect data for another 6 months.
Hopefully you have a quick fix from the company.