It's almost past one month since joining the institute. This institute gave me a great exposure to how things are handled on a research laboratory scale, importance of good laboratory practices, importance of maintaining record of daily works, how to plan experiments and research work and coping up with people.
As I've frequently been mentioning, failures are the best part. They teach us much better than any other source. Burn your hands and then you'll realize how to handle it, every time a PCR goes wrong, we explore for the reasons. In the process, you get to know the effect of various factors. Prepare a bad electrophoresis gel, you'll understand which factor caused the damage.
There are two types of learning, we either learn what has to be done or we learn what should not be done. At the end we remember failures more than "hurray"s. Don't we?
Rules to be followed while maintaining daily records:
1. always use pen and write neatly and clearly
2. Date every page
3. Start each experiment (topic, notes, calculations, etc) on a new page
4. Record Title and Objectives of each experiment at the top of the first page of the notebook
5. In case of any mistakes, don't obliterate it. you may need to read your mistakes later- perhaps you were right the first time! use a single cross out and EXPLAIN why it was an error.
6. Data types into the computer must be printed and taped in the lab notebook (ex- plots of data or figures)
7. When you record an observation in your notebook, include an explanation of what you were doing at the time. If appropriate, you may just record the step number in the instruction followed by your observation.
8. You must have your lab notebook signed by you and supervisor on the day the experiment was performed.
As I've frequently been mentioning, failures are the best part. They teach us much better than any other source. Burn your hands and then you'll realize how to handle it, every time a PCR goes wrong, we explore for the reasons. In the process, you get to know the effect of various factors. Prepare a bad electrophoresis gel, you'll understand which factor caused the damage.
There are two types of learning, we either learn what has to be done or we learn what should not be done. At the end we remember failures more than "hurray"s. Don't we?
Rules to be followed while maintaining daily records:
1. always use pen and write neatly and clearly
2. Date every page
3. Start each experiment (topic, notes, calculations, etc) on a new page
4. Record Title and Objectives of each experiment at the top of the first page of the notebook
5. In case of any mistakes, don't obliterate it. you may need to read your mistakes later- perhaps you were right the first time! use a single cross out and EXPLAIN why it was an error.
6. Data types into the computer must be printed and taped in the lab notebook (ex- plots of data or figures)
7. When you record an observation in your notebook, include an explanation of what you were doing at the time. If appropriate, you may just record the step number in the instruction followed by your observation.
8. You must have your lab notebook signed by you and supervisor on the day the experiment was performed.
No comments:
Post a Comment