SCIENCE
Sorry about the randomness. Some pictures I took last week...
The red stuff is human blood (muuhahaha) infected with a fast growing strain of malaria. It's poured on top of a equilibrium density gradient. That's a fancy way of saying a tube with different concentrations of goopy stuff layered on top of one another. Like if you filled up half a glass with a really thick milkshake and then slowly poured a less thick milkshake on top of it so you made two layers. If you added Hershey's chocolate sauce it would probably eventually drop to the bottom but Bourbon Butter Pecan Ciao Bella gelato might float in the middle. In turns out that, for reasons of permeability, the blood cells infected for more than a day float in between the two layers while all the other cells sink to the bottom. Even though you can already see some of the cell clumps floating to the bottom this process would take many hours for everything to settle. So I subject them to 12,000 times the force of gravity in a centrifuge which makes everything go where it should in a few minutes. 12,000xg or about 10,000rpm is pretty fast. It sounds like an X-Wing powering up. If the centrifuge wasn't balanced, at full speed it might start to shake and possibly go for a walk. Unbalanced centrifuges tend to have very poor etiquette like failing to use the door like everyone else when they want to pop into the next room. So there's a sensor that shuts the centrifuge down if it starts feeling frisky.
Posted on Tuesday, May 3, 2005, 7:13 PM
Comments
You said you are a scientist, one of these past posts, and with this "malaria centrifuge/milkshake non sense" explanation (hilarious by the way)I wonder what kind of scientist you are???
Great pics, as usual! Did you make a photography course or are you a natural born photographer?
(too many questions)
Posted by: Rita on May 4, 2005 7:49 PM
I would like to know how you take the photos that are grainy black and white, with splotches of color. Is this an effect done by your camera or your software. if the latter, what kind of software? Thanks. LHB
Posted by: Laurence on May 5, 2005 11:43 AM
Thanks but my pictures aren't very good so calm down. I'm just lazily snapping random pictures and trying to make them look halfway interesting for my own amusement. Good photography, like most anything else, probably takes hard work at the very least and I'm not working very hard.
I use a Canon A510 because it's like $150. I got bored with flash photography so I started experimenting without it. I'm about to get bored of this too. But anyway, here's how to do it. I don't know about other brands but canon digital cameras have a ISO setting which is probably some algorithm that changes the light sensitivity in way that mimics natural film grain size. Counter-intuitively, you need to set this on the lowest setting. This produces finer grain and lowers the sensitivity of the camera so that it won't pick up color in darker areas of the picture. I usually set the camera on manual, open up the aperature all the way and shoot a bunch of photos with different shutter speeds bracketing as high as 1/60 and as low as 1/15. You end up with an almost completely black extremely underexposed picture. Then you throw it into photoshop and use the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment to pump up the shadows to where you like it. Takes 10 seconds.
Posted by: Casa de Punk on May 5, 2005 12:42 PM
yo-- those are some hot dancer pics, and hey... didn't I take that one of the Bar sign ? damn you art stealer!! hehe jk jk
ps-- loved the science pictures and explanation. quite interesting. plus, the quirky description of the centrifuge, love it.
Posted by: bannanaramma on May 8, 2005 11:45 PM