Week 10: Time to Rerun

Last week, I finished the last two experiments of the 6 pilots with the new procedure.

They showed the effect we were looking for!

Once we have a script to properly implement the new procedure, I’ll be running the experiments again.

We also had a lab cleanup. When a lab is 20 years old (this lab was founded before I was born), there’s a lot of junk to clean up. The cleanup took about 3 days, of all cleaning and no experiments or other work at all.

We implemented certain principles and paradigms when cleaning and organizing:

• All things of one kind or related to one activity or operation go in ONE place. This way everyone only has to go to one place when looking for all the materials for a certain activity. Also, it means there’s no confusion over how much of something we have left. There’s only once place to check.
• This means we have to carefully plan where we’re going to be doing each activity in the lab. Now, all soldering is done downstairs, and all solution-making is done upstairs, for example.
• Place items according to how often one uses them. Items used very often go in drawers and cabinets that area easy to reach. Less often used items, or storage items, go in areas more difficult to reach (high up shelves).
• Everything should be placed so that people can get one thing without having to disturb the locations of other things.
• There is much to be said for labeling. Everything must always be labeled. Clearly and beautifully.
• We threw away or gave away a lot of things. By things, I mean junk things that we do not use anymore. Old desks, tubes, and just plain dust. We also vacuumed that.
• Technically, we’re still not done. There are still a couple of carts of things left in the lab that need to be sorted.

Anyway, that really was most of the week. If you ever need to clean up a lab (or any space, really), these tips will be helpful to have!