Thursday, September 13, 2007

A day at work - Monash University Installation

A lot of people asked about what I sell in reality, since I always mentioned that I am merely a sales girl. But the moment when I say I sell scientific research stuffs, most people misunderstood by thinking I sell microscopes, erm... worse is drugs, pharmaceuticals...

So... today I will bring you to take a glimpse on a typical day of work I have.

Hmmm... in reality it is a bit more special today, as the fact that we are delivering some goods to Monash Sunway today. I have been very happy since we first received the order for the goods from Monash School of Medicine and Health Science since two months ago. Their decision in buying the stuffs propose by my colleague and I, marked a milestone that I can indeed sell something instead of being perceived that I day dream half the time in this company of mine... or at least I think of myself that way. Keke...

Lew, Ham and I have been busy unwrapping all the goods from the boxes, trying to assemble them, clean them till late.

First we had the pH meter done... in case you dunno, Sir Arnold Beckman invented the first pH meter in the world... and therefore people now can tell me I need to buy different type of soap with different types of pH so my skin can look the same 20 years from now!

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Then got to calibrate with the buffer of different pH... took this pic partly because their color combination look great!

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And and its done!

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Then started meddling with the centrifuge.

According to wikipedia:

A centrifuge is a piece of equipment, generally driven by a motor, that puts an object in rotation around a fixed axis, applying force perpendicular to the axis. The centrifuge works using the sedimentation principle, where the centripetal acceleration is used to separate substances of greater and lesser density. There are many different kinds of centrifuges, including those for very specialised purposes.


We started with the small one first -- microcentrifuges, that spin only the eppendorf tubes

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The unrefrigerated Microfuge

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The refrigerated Microcentrifuge

This is the rotor, where you put your sample tubes to spin. The cover is used to prevent tube breakage, in case that the tubes are too small for the hole. Who knows what kind of dangerous specimen people might be having inside it.

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And, there's the bigger one -- Bench Top Centrifuge as well...

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Assembling the rotor hand to be fitted into the centrifuge

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This rotor is a bit different, the place to fit the sample is a bucket swinging a little when spinning.

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And finally, we came to the biggest item for the day. The ultracentrifuge that is.

All wrapped up!

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And unwrapped!

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Wikipedia on Ultracentrifuge:

The ultracentrifuge is a centrifuge optimized for spinning a rotor at very high speeds, capable of generating acceleration as high as 1,000,000 g (9,800 km/s²). There are two kinds of ultracentrifuges, the preparative and the analytical ultracentrifuge. Both classes of instruments find important uses in molecular biology, biochemistry and polymer science. Theodor Svedberg invented the analytical ultracentrifuge in 1923, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1926 for his research on colloids and proteins using the ultracentrifuge.

Therefore you can see that for such high speed instrument, it is the hardest thing to install and to commission. Ham has got to make sure the machine itself is balanced, so as to prevebt accident from happening when running.

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He has also got to check to make sure the leg are securely leveled.

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Phew, by the time we were done, it was almost 5.30pm. Just in time for us to go home. Will have to come back again sometime next week to teach our customer how to use it properly.

Anyways, these stuffs are just one part of the thing I have to "sell". Perhaps I will take more pictures the next round when we have more installation going on. Heh...

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