Thoughts on my ILN experience
Apr 2nd, 2009 by Steffanie Reid
I recorded these thoughts awhile ago, but just got to posting them here…
I just completed my ILN lab. This was an experience where we were able to remotely operate a GC/MS analyzing a prepared sample. I chose to analysis sample 5, the anesthesiologist as I figured, since he’s the person handling the drugs, he’d have the best chance to swipe some.
My GC/MS analysis resulted in 2 peaks. I library searched both of them. The first I identified as caffeine (no surprise there) and the second I identified as Fentanyl!!
I’m interested in hearing what everyone else discovered! I love mysteries and as a chemist, it was nice to go back to a type of analysis I haven’t had a chance to do since I was in University!! 🙂
Who knows, maybe they were all swiping some drugs!
On a different note, I found I couldn’t get the camera to pan or zoom. I used the sliders, but the image didn’t seem to change. That being said, there isn’t much to watch while a GC/MS is processing, so I’m not sure why the camera was considered necessary in the first place.
I was very excited to arrive at my lab date and time. I felt like this was an appointment I could not miss which differentiated this experience from that of a simulation that is available all the time. I felt like I had the privilege of this one hour on the machine and I needed to be as prepared as possible to make the best of my one hour!
It would be interesting to see what effect (if any) working on experiments such as this while online with a lab partner may have. Would the collaboration between you and your lab partner help you to get more out of an experience such as this?
Science is a discipline that is never conducted in a vacuum, scientists are constantly collaborating in one way or another so it would be interesting to see if collaboration could be added into an experience such as this.
I sat in my PJ’s doing the lab, and it was more relaxed than I remember my university or high school labs being. While it’s interesting that we were running actual samples on an actual machine, it felt like a simulation as we were analyzing pre-prepared samples that we had no control over.
When in university, the major portion of the experiment was in preparation of the sample, the final analysis step of injecting the sample into the GC/MS almost felt like submitting your experimental work for assessment. The hands-on portion of the lab was lost in this ILN experience (for me anyway).
Even if my camera had been working, I’m not sure watching the machine inject my sample would have made it feel less like a simulation.