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Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

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- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
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- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"
Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.
Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.
We moderate for vibe, not category. Pruning is light, especially where a post creates interesting discussion. Experimenting is encouraged.
See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.
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I fix software on these things! No one ever quite gets what I do for work, it's nice to run across in the wild.
I feel seen lol
What do they do?
Top left is a thermal cycler. Basically it heats and cools samples at a given rate. This is primarily used for generic PCR, and certain enzymatic reactions. Top right is the fancier version of this, it is for qPCR, so it can do the heating and cooling and has a laser/detector for the dye or probe that reacts to generating more dna with each PCR cycle so you can quantify approximately how much of the target DNA you had.
Bottom right is a luminex. This uses detection of fluorophore signals to measure multiple analyates, usually different proteins.
Idk what bottom left is.
Wow, I know some of those words.
Top left is the CFX96/384, which is also a qPCR instrument.
Bottom left is the 3500 Genetic Analyzer, as someone identified. It's used for sanger sequencing I believe. My last lab had one but I was never trained on it.
I thought it was just their T100, the CFX96s I've used don't have the touchscreen but yeah the bigger "lid" does look like for the CFX.
The bases and hot blocks are interchangable with that series. We recently upgraded to the Opus but our previous CFX96 had the T1000 touch base.
This guy sciences.
Also username checks out.
I know nothing about this kind of lab equipment but Google says the bottom left device is a human DNA sequencer, ABI model 3500.
Thank you, they sound really specialized!
Some kinda lab work, maybe blood chem or urinalysis. I should clarify that since I'm a software person I don't even know what they do, really, I just fix it when they stop transmitting lab test results to the database.