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> A typical PhD student in the biosciences will use about 200,000 pipette tips over the course of their research. (An estimated ten boxes of 96 tips per week, w
by dmd 3y ago
> A typical PhD student in the biosciences will use about 200,000 pipette tips over the course of their research. (An estimated ten boxes of 96 tips per week, with 50 working weeks per year over a 5-year period, comes out to 240,000 tips. And five years is a generous estimate for completion of a PhD in the biosciences.)
This seems ridiculously high to me. If the student works 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, they would be using a new tip about every 3-4 minutes nonstop, every single hour of those 10 hours a day 6 days a week for 5 years. No reading, no writing, no meetings - just pipette tips every 4 minutes, 10 hours a day for 5 years.
Is that really the life?
edit: Oh. Machines. Right.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago[dead]
- bschne 3y agowas wondering the same thing!
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoYou assume they do it manually. Today we have machines that can batch processes using pipettes, and they can burn them at a fast rate.
- gipp 3y agoEven when done by hand, you're also generally going to use a large batch all at once to create a panel of different tests under varying conditions. So it's more like you're using a new tip about every 5-10 seconds for 15 minutes or so, twice a day.
- margalabargala 3y agoMulti-pipettes are made, as well, here's a 64-channel one: https://bioventures.com/products/capp%C2%AE-64-channel-pipette-0-5-10ul https://bioventures.com/products/capp%C2%AE-64-channel-pipet... When you're using 64 tips at a time, it's easy to imagine using ten boxes of 96 tips per week. Ten boxes of tips will fill that pipette only 15 times. So you're using your multipipette twice a day.
- Metacelsus 3y ago>Is that really the life? Yes it is! For example, a simple 96-well plate qPCR experiment can use 192 tips. It's easier with multichannel pipettes though. So it's more like: use 200 tips in the morning, then do reading and meetings the rest of the day.
- kortex 3y agoI've gone through a box a day at peak just doing regular chemistry (biochem uses way more) so I completely believe it. It's not like one pipet tip a minute. It's more like, you have N source vials and M destination vials/wells/rows, and you'll do that several times a day, interspersed with other processes. A cycle goes like: 10 New tip 20 Suck up sample from source n 30 Dispense into m-sub-i 40 while you still have destinations for the current solution, goto 20 50 eject tip 60 goto 10 This cycle takes maybe a few seconds to half a minute. Also multiply number of tips by P if you have a multi-tip pipette.
- flobosg 3y ago> a new tip about every 3-4 minutes nonstop Pipetting and changing tips are a matter of seconds, not minutes.