• Question: how does making a tin foil ship and a thinking box help you with your research and work ?

    Asked by shigamoo19 to Amy on 13 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by imascientist1471.
    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hey Shigamoo!

      Ah….well the tinfoil ship was just what it sounds like – a little boat made of tinfoil! I needed to freeze down some cells in tubes using liquid nitrogen and I had to freeze a lot of tubes. I needed the tubes to stay in the liquid nitrogen until I’d finished freezing them all but didn’t want them to drop down to the very bottom of the cannister and get lost. So I made the tinfoil ship so that I could partially float them on the surface until they were all frozen and then safely get them out afterwards! (Nitrgoen is the main gas in the air around us but you can get it to form a liquid at −196 °C which is freeeeeeeeeeeeeezing and pretty dangerous…if you stuck your finger in it for any length of time it would just freeze and drop off so you don’t want to be guddling around in it looking for tubes!!).

      The thinking box was just what it sounds like really – a MASSIVE cardboard box that I joked about sitting in to think…actually me and one of the other girls in my lab hid in it to jump out on someone but they taped us in and we ended up stuck in the box for ages. My boss wasn’t very impressed but everyone else was wetting themselves laughing…so I guess it wasn’t quite so useful! But thinking time is really important as a scientist…sometimes you just need to go through what you’ve done and have a good think so that you can work out what you need to do next!

      Hope you had a good day at school!

      Laters 🙂

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