RM's+Week+of+July+21

Back to RM's Summer Research


 * July 21, 2008**

Made a sample with 1 ul of DNA solution and 9 ul of the buffer. It was no good. I am going back to the 2 ul DNA + 8 ul buffer. Made 2 new samples with the latter formula. I also transferred captured images from Thursday and Friday to a zipdisc - the particles looked like DNA rafts. I will do section analysis tomorrow.


 * July 22, 2008**

I went to the AFM and viewed the sample (with 2 ul of DNA) made yesterday. I obtained some good images and will do section analysis tomorrow because I'm still transferring images from the computer in the AFM room onto my zipdisc so that I can start to work on my PowerPoint presentation. Anyway, I took about 6 images.


 * July 23, 2008**

I conducted section analysis on the images for about 2 hours. Looking at the data as a whole, the width measurements were quite consistent - between 35 and 39 nm long. However, the height is what troubled me. All of the measurements showed the beads to be below 2 nm, when in fact, according to the color scale, they are all above 2 nm. Additionally, I madea an outline for my PowerPoint presentation.


 * July 24, 2008**

I was unable to go into the lab today. However, I worked on my PowerPoint presentation from home.


 * July 25, 2008**

I went into the AFM and conducted some additional section analysis. The total number of beads that I used in my calculations was 102 beads. I calculated the average length and height of the particles, and they closely matched published results.