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points by cinntaile 1 day ago | 0 comments
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.