User:Brian P. Josey/Notebook/2009/11/10

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Calibrating the Thermo Cycler
I'm calibrating the thermo cycler today, and measuring the temperatures in the tubes using Anthony's program in it. First we heated up the hotplate and the wells to 37.0°C and measured the temperature in tubs placed in each of the wells. Then we let the program cycle through three temperatures, 72°C 94°C and 60°C and measured the temperature in the tube at each of these. The raw data from this is saved as a spreadsheet in the Google Docs account.

The sensor we have, unfortunately is really getting on my nerves and making it a little difficult to measure the temperature accurately. The wire is really sensitive to movements, so if you bump it, it could give a completely in accurate reading. If the bump is severe enough, it measures random values that are obviously too high, on the order of thousands of degrees Celsius. Also, if the wire is not put in the tube in exactly the right way when measuring, it will read temperatures that are off. For example, I had one that read 86°C, when the true value should have been much, much closer to 60°C. Because of this, I have to redo some of them to make sure that I am doing it right and getting values that actually make sense.

Actually, nevermind, I have no idea what is going on. Steve Koch 00:28, 11 November 2009 (EST): Hmmm...do we need a better probe / instrument? Brian P. Josey 21:24, 12 November 2009 (EST) I'm not sure, I might have been using it wrong, but when Anthony was doing the same thing earlier, he was having some weird results too.

Brian P. Josey 14:00, 17 November 2009 (EST) I completely forgot to include the spreadsheet for this, so here it is:


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