nm0253: welcome er to the first year laboratory class as you know er biological 
sciences is an experimental science everything we know about biology we have 
learned either by c-, careful observation of living organisms or through 
experiments er experimental work in in biology what we are doing in this course 
of biological sciences is training you to become professional biologists so 
obviously that includes training you in laboratory methods more than that it 
involves training you in how to observe and how to report your observations so 
if you intend to become a professional biologist evidently er this laboratory 
course is extremely important to you even if you don't intend to become a 
professional biologist we all think that training in laboratory methods is very 
valuable to you in the sense of transferable skills because the skills of 
observing understanding and reporting are going to be useful to you in any 
profession whatever 
profession you choose be it biology or being a policeman or being an accountant 
or whatever so we think that these laboratory courses are extremely valuable 
and extremely important to you so you are now launched into your career as a 
professional biologist i should say there's a number of things that i need to 
talk to you about as a sort of introduction to the laboratory class er and 
they're all listed on this board here er which i will leave up for you to look 
at later on perhaps if you need to so the first point i want to make the first 
thing i want to talk about is the staff who are going to be running this 
particular class er you know me i'm namex my colleagues over there er there's 
namex who will put his hand up namex namex er sorry namex she's recently 
changed her name which always confused me namex namex he has a nickname 
[laughter] which i'm going not going to release to 
you you may you may find out later and namex the first three and and me will be 
most of the time in the laboratory working with you namex er will be upstairs 
in the computer room where he will be offering you assistance in in working 
with P-Cs i'll come back to that in a moment so those are the staff the other 
extremely important member of staff whom i don't immediately see namex there 
you are over there put your hand up namex is the a member of the technical 
staff now her function is extremely important in that if equipment goes wrong 
or you don't have the right chemicals or something like that you go to namex 
and she will always be able to sort you out she's much better at those sorts of 
things than the members of staff other members of staff are so namex is the 
person to look after your technical problems and other problems i'm quite sure 
technical problems here right now you have in front of you been given a green 
folder now that green folder 
contains one or two useful bits for you a floppy disk how about that and a 
black marker pen these are things that you will be using throughout your 
laboratory class classes unfortunately if you lose them we shan't be giving you 
any others er there are other things in here er books about safety and little 
little er books leaflets about safety which you need to use which we'll have to 
use we'll talk about that again in a moment er and what else is there hazards 
related things like that little odds and ends so there's a few free free gifts 
that you might like not quite as grand as the free gifts you get when you open 
your bank account but they will be in this laboratory class perhaps more 
valuable okay now a daybook this is something that we talked about a little bit 
er when we talked to you initially with namex you remember the purpose of a 
daybook is an extremely important 
thing er because you c-, record in your daybook your immediate observations as 
you are making your observations so you're noting down data that you are 
generating and i-, more importantly you write down what you've actually done i-,
i-, i-, in your experimental work your daybook has to be a working record of 
your experimental studies working record which has got to be sufficiently 
quality sufficiently good quality so that if i want to sit down and read it i 
can learn from that daybook what you have actually done now this is something 
that you must learn er our PhD stdents are obliged to do it even more so er 
post-doctoral research fellows as a scientist of course we all use a daybook 
and the daybook has to be so good that you can always know what you've actually 
done er and more importantly so that somebody else can know what you've 
actually done in the future okay so that's tremendously important it also is a 
check for us that you have actually attended the 
class as namex pointed out in the past some wicked people have come into the 
class signed on to the list and then gone and nicked the data from somebody 
else and written it up and got credit now that's obviously not allowed so the 
daybook has to be checked by a member of the staff before you leave the 
laboratory and signed now what i like people to do members of staff to do is 
actually run through the daybook what you've done and ask you er about it er 
and make sure that it is of a suitable standard and i prefer people not to 
leave the laboratory until the the staff member is satisfied that your daybook 
is adequate okay if it's not adequate it won't be signed i think that's 
actually quite important and that's some er s-, something that you need to be 
trained in er in some laboratories particularly commercial laboratories er and 
particularly er laboratories in hospitals where diagnostic er work is being 
done the daybook takes on a particular importance for commercial 
reasons or for or reasons to do with the the quality of diagnosis in the 
laboratory or whatever so as a professional biologist you will always be using 
a daybook so get into the habit of using it properly now okay next point that i 
want to talk about is the reports now i won't remind you of the biblical story 
about hiding your light under a bushel if you have done the most marvellous 
experimental work discovered the most important things in science but don't 
report it in a clear fashion so that other people can understand it you have 
been wasting your time so the importance of the report is communication if you 
don't write a good report you really are wasting your time okay now we want to 
train you again er in developing and producing a professional style report we 
model the laboratory reports on a scientific paper that is the way in which 
professional scientists report their work in the scientific literature now 
this style of reporting is probably rather different from the style of writing 
up experiments that you've learned at school we have to encourage you to 
unlearn what you've learned at school and relearn what you will do as a 
professional biologist so i sincerely hope that you have all read what is in 
the manual about how to write a report and i will repeatedly over the next few 
weeks be alluding to how to present your data and how to write the report 
because it is so important it's one of those transferable skills that i 
referred to at the beginning so we lay out the report fairly formally er as 
with a starting off with a summary which is a summary of the whole of your 
report all of it then the introduction the importance of the introduction is to 
set the background to the experimental work you're going to be describing a 
little bit of description of previously understood facts or whatever then you 
er bring in a section which is talking about your methodology 
now in general your methodology section in these reports doesn't need to be 
very long because as you know the methodology is all written down in in the 
green manual and there's no point no point at all in your copying out chunks of 
the green manual into your report so don't if there is material that's in the 
green manual just refer to the green manual for example methods were carried 
out just exactly as in the manual and nothing to add but if you do actually 
design a little bit of i-, er methodology yourself which you will be expected 
to do to do increasingly or if the methodology is varied from what's in the 
green book obviously you do need to point out in the in in your er report that 
you have changed that bit of methodology or developed that bit of methodo-, 
methodology or invented whatever that methodology okay now the next section of 
your report is the one that is really vital it is results your observation what 
you have discovered from the experiments you have done now very many st-, 
students actually tend to skimp on this section a-, and write it very briefly 
perhaps they just present a table of data or a diagram and say these are the 
results full stop that is not adequate in your results section what you have to 
do is say in words in good concise literate scientific English say what you 
have observed and you use your diagrams your figures to support and illustrate 
what you have said in words so what i am trying to put over is that your 
results section must be an integration of English language description of what 
you've done and diagrams and figures which support your description this is 
very important to work the diagrams and your text together okay now what do you 
report very often people say to me well you know i haven't really s-, observed 
very much i can't there's not much to say er in fact in all these practicals 
these practicals that we're 
running initially are fairly simple and straightforward practicals and there's 
not one hell of a bundle of stuff that you can report but very often people 
leave out quite important little observations which actually are germane 
germinal whatever to to your observations to to your to your experiment and i 
shall bring those up as they come around can't talk about them in in advance 
'cause that would of course be giving the game away so your results report your 
observations and finally your discussions or conclusions whatever you like to 
call it what that section really must do is trying to draw out of your 
experimental work whatever new findings you have and relate them back to the 
background material you have presented in your introduction so that you go 
around the full circle now what i've been doing is really describing the ideal 
er and until you get a little bit more advanced as an experimental biologist er 
perhaps there won't be so 
much to say don't worry about that but there is always something to say and 
that's something i shall be coming back to repeatedly so this skill of writing 
a scientific report is something that we hope very much will develop over the 
next weeks sooner the better i reckon so let me just go on briefly to talk 
about personal computers P-Cs as you have noticed excuse me around the 
university there are there are plenty of er I-B-M style P-Cs for your use there 
is in the room above this about twenty P-Cs which obviously are are for your 
use when when in in the laboratory and there are other rooms around the 
university you have to get used to using P-Cs to do your work on now i'm quite 
sure that nearly or most of you are already very familiar er with using I-B-M 
style P-Cs er i'm quite sure that everybody in the room let me let me just 
check 
is there anybody that's never used a personal computer no course not are there 
people here who er prefer to work with Macs if so hard luck sorry 'cause you'll 
have to work with P-Cs 'cause that's what the university uses now most of you 
as i as i'm quite sure will be fairly familiar with P-Cs but there will be a 
few of you who are not that familiar or perhaps having been brought up on Macs 
don't really understand P-Cs don't worry we have help in store as you know the 
information technology er whatever they call themselves er unit down the road 
there publish useful guidebooks er to the to the software that we have but more 
immediately namex the one member who is not going to be in the lab will be the 
guy who's going to be in the P-C room upstairs waiting for people to come along 
asking for help he is an expert he knows everything there is to be known about 
Microsoft and P-Cs and things like that so if you are uncertain how to use 
Excel to 
draw diagrams uncertain how to use the World Wide Web to get useful scientific 
information or anything like that go and talk to namex in the P-C room he'll be 
there basically from eleven o'clock to three o'clock with a lunch break okay 
now next point extremely important point that i want to make is this issue of 
safety er as namex pointed out when we talked previously we haven't yet lost 
permanently an undergraduate through an accident in the laboratory and we never 
want that to happen obviously there have been occasions where people have been 
injured and have been hurt quite badly er so we have to be sure have to be very 
careful er that you are aware of s-, ri-, safety hazards risks in the 
laboratory now i do actually formally have to ask you er well let me go through 
in order i've got a number of points written down there is one absolute rule 
for insurance reasons 
if there is no staff member in the laboratory you should not be here okay 
because we have to supervise you and if there's no supervision the university's 
insurance policy is void so look out for somebody can be somebody in the prep 
room but always check that there is somebody to supervise you the next thing i 
have to ask you to do is to fill out sorry is to read this little safety 
leaflet Health and Safety in Laboratories Instructions for Undergraduates you 
must read this and towards the back or the back page not quite sure there is a 
declaration i have read it signed okay you tear this thing off the end and put 
it in a basket at the back there namex is the basket's ready 
nf0254: and er to write them in capital letters on the front 
nm0253: write your name in capital letters a squiggle a scrawl that's 
incomprehensible causes us all sorts of problems 'cause we have to check 
against the list of names that everybody has 
actually signed this so sign it but also put your name in capitals please now 
if we don't have these declarations back er within a very short time we will be 
chasing you er and maybe even exclude you from the laboratory because this is 
an essential essential thing that you simply must do okay now few points that i 
have to do a little bit like the er air hostess down there you have a fire exit 
down there you have a fire exit down there you have a fire exit every public 
room has to have at least three fire exits and there they are okay so if 
there's a fire alarm sounds as there was yesterday at half past three well then 
those are the ways out okay fire extinguishers are also located and fire is 
there a fire blanket namex is there a fire blanket in the place 
nf0254: there's no fire blanket 
nm0253: there's no fire blanket okay er but there are fire extinguishers and 
they likewise are located by the doors so just be aware that those things are 
available of course as you 
know if a fire starts in the laboratory er you evac-, we evacuate the 
laboratory and we only fight the fire if that is er doesn't risk our safety 
okay i need i have to tell you that be absolutely clear that you understand 
these issues now you wash yourselves on the way out that's a standard safety 
regulation so that you aren't carrying contamination on your hands if by 
accident you get something in your eye there is an eyewash down there okay by 
the handwash so anything in your eye go down there and wash out your eye and 
you obviously a member of staff will be on top of you very quickly to help you 
er i should say that you should treat all chemicals as dangerous within reason 
o-, obviously not H-two-O i mean don't worry too much about that but 
concentrated H-C-L er and other suchlike chemicals you should treat with 
respect you know that from school i'm quite sure er you should treat all micro-
organisms that we use in the laboratory as potential pathogens now we 
do not give you pathogenic micro-organisms to work with should we be so foolish 
no we'd lose all our undergraduates wouldn't we so the path-, mi-, micro-
organisms we give you to work with are are not pathogenic but we want to train 
you in the handling of pathogenic organisms so if you're asked to work with er 
what is it that yeast whose name always escapes me saccharomyces it's not 
cerevisiae is it it's carlsbergensis that's right er if you're asked to work 
with that yeast it is completely harmless you can make bread with it if you 
really want to er but you should treat it er as a potential pathogen and handle 
it as such this is part of your training right i'm coming to an end now all 
these things you will immediately forget i'm quite sure but you will be 
reminded don't worry so i'm coming close again and there are these headers here 
er the lab routines er you will find usually the er necessary equipment and men-
, sometimes the chemicals that you need to work with on the bench in front of 
you 
additional materials are over there sometimes over here so if you want need to 
get any additional materials you go o-, go and get them bring them to your 
bench when you finish for the day you leave the lab clean and tidy or at least 
as clean and tidy as you possibly can so that means get rid of glassware that 
you've used there is always going to be er bins for glassware over there yes er 
we will tell you in more detail as we go around what to do with glassware but 
basically everything you've used must be put back er everything that you use 
sorry well rephrase that everything that is reusable should be back put back 
where you got it er like pipette holders or whatever everything that needs to 
be washed needs to go into one of the bins to be taken away and washed for you 
so leave your bench clean and tidy turn off anything electrical make sure that 
you don't leave any spillages on the bench and that sort of thing okay just as 
though you were working in your kitchen 
at home or whatever leave it in a decent state okay now that's actually a lot 
of information that i've given in a short time er s-, a lot of these points i 
shall be coming back to later er there will be specific er points made about 
specific safety hazards for example er and i shall be talking again about 
reports so perhaps that you have not memorized everything i've said is not er a 
terrible bad thing but i hope i've given you some sort of introduction and an 
st-, understanding about how we run these courses this course er now let me are 
there any questions i know there are questions there always are questions but 
this is a slightly forbidding environment for asking questions er if there are 
things that are gentleman over there 
sm0255: er do we er get a break 
nm0253: do you get a break you get a break yes i don't er not really [laughter] 
what we do i 
generally run the laboratory straight through i unless there's a special reason 
i don't close the laboratory at lunchtime so you take breaks for lunch or 
whatever comfort breaks as necessary through the day yeah there is no specific 
time so the laboratory starts er at eleven-fifteenish or eleven-thirty by the 
time i finish talking and goes through until you finish er obviously if you 
need to go out for a particular reasons then you do so this is not a prison 
okay any others ah yes 
sf0256: do we when we work with our partners and things do we both have to 
record results in our daybooks 
nm0253: oh yes indeed 
nm0257: the question 
nm0253: the question was when we're working in a as in a partnership of two 
should both partners record the information in their daybooks of course you 
should er these are your your own workbooks your own 
er independent records of what you've done er inevitably there's boxing and 
coxing and one person will perhaps be actually doing the er the experimentation 
and the other person is taking notes and then you swap y-, or whatever er and 
you transfer the the notes between the two of you obviously you develop a 
working partnership but everybody has to have their own daybook properly 
completed and signed by the end of the day okay and i know namex talked about 
working in pairs the other day so i'm not going to er go over that again er 
except to say that i hope you have found yourself partnerships er if there's 
rearrangement that's fine if you want to move around a bit that's fine er get 
to make sure you get with somebody that you can work with but once that 
partnership is established it has to stay put really more questions we will be 
walking around all day so questions that arise during the day we will answer 
individually 
obviously okay good now today's little bit of work i assume everybody's read 
the manual er and and everybody will have noticed that it's a fairly 
straightforward experiment er basically it's a titration of an acid against a 
base in which you examine the way P-H changes when you do that titration you 
can draw a number of interesting and useful conclusions about biology from 
these very simple expe-, this very simple exercise er in P-H metering er it is 
deliberately made simple because this is your first day in the laboratory we 
wouldn't ask you to be doing difficult things because er it it it simply 
wouldn't work so it's a simple experiment it is not a negligible experiment 
though there are things which you do need to record properly one thing i have 
to confess to is that we never have enough apparatus er in particular er we 
have insufficient P-H meters to give every pair a P-H meter now there are 
eighty-odd 
students here forty pairs we have twenty-something P-H meters i'm sorry about 
that er the university just couldn't would not countenance er buying forty P-H 
meters to be used on two two days in the year now this is a problem which 
scientists all the time are facing they never have enough equipment enough 
apparatus they never have the most recent piece they always have to go and 
cadge borrow and share and so that's an important principle that you're going 
to learn is that you're going to have to er share apparatus with other people 
share equipment particularly P-H meters today so what you will find is that the 
quick ones will have grabbed the P-H meters the slow ones will be without P-H 
meters don't despair be patient there are always other things that you can be 
doing whilst waiting for the P-H meter to become available there are solutions 
to make up there are daybooks to write up there will be in following weeks er 
your reports to discuss with 
the staff i forgot to say the staff will er read through your reports annotate 
them and discuss with them we with discuss them with you as necessary the 
following week okay ah the other thing i've forgotten to say is handing in of 
reports there are baskets at the back there er and today's class that is the 
Thursday class has to hand in their report thank you namex basket's at the back 
there er the Thursday class has to hand in their report by noon the following 
Tuesday now these reports aren't yet being assessed so you lose no credit if 
you don't give them in but what you will lose is the staff member's criticism 
of your report discussion of your report so get them there by midday on Tuesday 
okay and when they're assessed as you probably know if you're late you will be 
penalized so that's an aside which has made me forget what i was saying right 
waiting for equipment er there are always other things you 
can do whilst waiting for equipment to become available go and have lunch say 
nearly lunchtime already isn't it or go up to the P-C room and familiarize 
yourself with the P-Cs or look at your e-mail or whatever so although you might 
feel a bit cross that you can't immediately get hold of a P-H meter do not 
think oh gosh it's a waste of time you must be using your time planning your 
time through the day and again that's a thing you have to learn when you can't 
have what you want immediately well then you have to find other ways of using 
your time profitably something that takes some people decades to learn i'm not 
sure that i've learned it yet but i'm trying right now what i've got to do now 
er is divide you up into sort of ad hoc groups so that the staff members can 
gather you together in order to talk about today's class what we're actually 
doing er what i've always done is walked around the room counting off students 
and saying this is group A this is 
group B this is group C and this is group D and then namex will take group A 
namex will take group B namex will take group C and i'll have group D yes 
that's yeah so that's what i'm going to do now er when we move from these 
introductory classes to the subsequent classes we will reform those groups for 
for for for reasons again to do with the structure of the of the starting of 
the classes but these are ad hoc groups er er and will not be permanent so 
that's what i have to do now is walk around counting you off okay so i'll start 
off with do any of my colleagues have anything they need they feel i've left 
out that i need to add no okay namex are you happy with everything i've said 
nf0254: yes 
nm0253: good okay so i'll walk around this is group A so one two three four 
five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen 
seventeen eighteen that's a bit awkward 'cause it overflows the bench 
so that's group A okay with namex 
nm0257: so you're with me 
sm0258: yes 
nm0253: right now we go on to group B one two three four five six seven eight 
nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen 
nineteen this is where my arithmetic starts to break down i'm afraid so so if 
anybody can help me i'm very glad 
sm0259: keep going 
nm0253: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen 
fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen okay and then that's group D so 
what i want to do now what i want you to do rather is to sort of get into a 
huddle perhaps group A at that end group B at that end group C at that end and 
group D at that end so the staff members can get with you talk you through what 
you're doing today and answering your questions