Tube of Blood (separated)

This is just a tube of blood that sat out on a counter. The red cells settle at the bottom. Somebody once had the hair brained idea of taking the settled red cells and injecting them back into athletes in order to boost endurance. The same effect can be achieved by training at high altitudes since the body has to compensate for the decreased oxygen, though probably not as well. It used to be very hard to detect, this blood doping. But now they have well documented tests that can catch it, even with normal variability among humans and hematocrit (the fraction of your blood that is composed of red cells). At least it is natural, however, it is also heartbreaking to find out the lengths that heroes will go to be heroes.

Nickle Mass Equals 5 Grams

Turns out that a nickle has a mass of exactly 5 grams. So you can use it to check that a scale is in calibration by placing the nickle on said scale and seeing if it reads 5 grams. Something about the government wanting 1 cent per gram, or something like that. Notice I used "mass" instead of "weight." All these years and that is still confusing. Mass is constant, weight depends on gravity, e.g., you are the same mass on the Earth and the Moon, but you are different weight on the Earth than you are on the Moon. Not sure about the new nickles, and you probably shouldn't use one this banged up. Some suggest even gluing 10 of them together to make a 50 gram calibration standard, though what about the weight of the glue? Every standard in the world is now related to the decay of some element, except for mass. That standard is still a 1 kg solid alloy of metals that are supposed to resist flaking and degradation because any time a piece of dust falls off, the standard changes. This is less than ideal. The original is in France, and the USA keeps a copy of the standard at NIST under a triple bell jar. It is only taken out once in a generation to make another copy or check the mass. Crazy and further reading:  http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/kilogram.html

  

The Origin of Species and Darwin's Black Box

When worlds collide. For those in the know, Darwin's Origin of the Species makes a strong case for evolution, whereas Darwin's Black Box (received as a gift) makes a specious case for intelligent design, aka the anti-evolution. I thought I was pretty clever putting these two next to each other on the book shelf. Maybe I am not as clever as I thought.

Chemical Engineering Course Cheat Sheet

For this course's final, we were allowed to put anything we wanted on a 8.5" by 11" piece of paper to use as a reference. It was actually a good studying trick, because you had to know what the hell you were writing down or it wouldn't make sense during the actual test. I was very proud of my sheet (especially since I had some crappy handwriting), so proud that I had the page laminated. Now future generations can enjoy my brilliance.

Biological Safety Cabinet

If used properly, biosafety cabinets contain ISO 5 (class 100) air. That means there are only 100 particles per every cubic foot of air. Normal air in and around cities contains about 1,000,000 particles per cubic foot of air. Good luck, lungs.