Post by zpyder on Aug 8, 2007 18:28:17 GMT
I hope this works, not tried hotlinking from my blog.
Basically I'm doing my dissertation on carnivorous plants, using VFT's and S.leucophylla.
Bit random and may make some of the VFT fanatics cry, but thoguht the semi-surrealism might be interesting to some people. (I find the imagery kinda cool in a "don't see that every day" kinda way!)
A dried out VFT. It's been put in an envelope and left in an oven for a few days at around 40 degrees.
The VFT's (48 of em) were then weighed, and then seperated into roots and shoots, before being weighed again (they're being analysed seperately.
And into some heating tubes
Ever wonder what plants look like in 70% Nitric acid?
According to my supervisor, pretty much all plants go this weird orange colour. The acid wasn't as cool as I thought (when you've played around with liquid nitrogen, acid pales in comparison!). It took about 10 secs for anything visible to happen, and then it was a bit like a teabag, the water and leaves slowly going orange. It wasn't for an hour or two before you could see the leaves breaking up.
And once the VFT's had been fully "Digested", the solution was heated at around 130-150 degrees to evaporate it off. And this is the residue you're left with.
Next I need to resuspend the residues to a certain volume before running it through a mass spectrometer to find out whether what I've been doing has had an effect!
Sorry for the poor quality photo's, they were taken on my phone.
Basically I'm doing my dissertation on carnivorous plants, using VFT's and S.leucophylla.
Bit random and may make some of the VFT fanatics cry, but thoguht the semi-surrealism might be interesting to some people. (I find the imagery kinda cool in a "don't see that every day" kinda way!)
A dried out VFT. It's been put in an envelope and left in an oven for a few days at around 40 degrees.
The VFT's (48 of em) were then weighed, and then seperated into roots and shoots, before being weighed again (they're being analysed seperately.
And into some heating tubes
Ever wonder what plants look like in 70% Nitric acid?
According to my supervisor, pretty much all plants go this weird orange colour. The acid wasn't as cool as I thought (when you've played around with liquid nitrogen, acid pales in comparison!). It took about 10 secs for anything visible to happen, and then it was a bit like a teabag, the water and leaves slowly going orange. It wasn't for an hour or two before you could see the leaves breaking up.
And once the VFT's had been fully "Digested", the solution was heated at around 130-150 degrees to evaporate it off. And this is the residue you're left with.
Next I need to resuspend the residues to a certain volume before running it through a mass spectrometer to find out whether what I've been doing has had an effect!
Sorry for the poor quality photo's, they were taken on my phone.
