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points by tarsierscripter 2 days ago | 0 comments

Even with automated experiments, the wet chemistry is slow. The kind of answer you might calculate in a second for a math problem could take many hours for the chemical reaction to occur.

Biology grad students can spend 40+ hours per week in the lab, on top of all their course work. It's not so bad though, since there's plenty of time to grade papers or work on your thesis while waiting for reactions to occur.

[–] radicalbyte 1 day ago

Yeah this, I used to sit in the lab with my girlfriend (now wife) when she was doing wet work for her pharmacology doctorate. It was slooooow. Like slower than J2EE. I could smoke a pork shoulder faster.

[–] cinntaile 1 day ago

If she's not doing work in the lab because that part is automated, perhaps she would have time for more and better experiment design?

[–] dekhn 1 day ago

Many lab experiments involve waiting for a period of time, and automating the steps before and after would be both expensive and failure prone.

[–] tarsierscripter 1 day ago

Or in other words: the bulk of the work is already automated! The conditions have been set up and the reactants are doing the work of reacting. There’s nothing for the experimenter to do but wait.

The reaction can’t be sped up, its rate is wholly constrained by the nature of the compounds involved and the physical parameters of the experiment, which may be very narrow to avoid unwanted products or even thermal runaway which could cause a total failure of the experiment or even a dangerous release of poisonous or explosive materials.