Day 10 - Final - Thoughts

Hello, Benedict here.

I am glad to have been given this opportunity to shadow PhD students at Nanyang Technological University's  Materials and Science Engineering. It has been a very fruitful experience. It opened my eyes to both what research is about and tertiary education

In tertiary education, it it much more different from Junior College. There are no teachers there to push you to do your own work. You have to plan everything yourself, though you can still get the help of your fellow friends and the kind guidance of professors when needed. Everything from test to training means that you need to know your own subject well. Also time management is important as there will always be things for you everyday. It might be paper work like reports or hands on like doing characterisation of proteins. Overall I think it is a very independent thing.

This experience also showed me much more about research. Now when I look at things, it is from a deeper perspective, I used to wonder where these things come from.  Now I know that they are developed in labs. It is a very long process and can take years to be made. This is usually not appreciated by a layman, but now it has enlightened me. This period also showed me why research can be a long and tedious process. Although there are people who got lucky and got desired results through luck, more often than not it is through trial and error. Much similar to Thomas Edison's many trials to get the right material for the light bulb filament. Research is very methodical. If you fail, do not only try again. You need to attempt to identify what might be causing the anomly and then repeat the whole procedure. It might take long to finally narrow it down. But it will certainly be rewarding when you can finally find what you were looking for and maybe improve the life of mankind.

This programme has definitely sparked my interest in materials engineering and will always be on my mind for consideration as my future course.

Day 10 - Final Lab Procedure with DaWei

Next we followed DaWei

DaWei's PAGE gel which has been shown in the previous post.

It has been destained and he washed it with water.

The cleaned sample is then placed between two sheets of clear plastic

 The gel is then taken to be scanned so that the results can be saved and further analysed at his own time.

After that he takes it back to the lab. He then transfers it to a sealed plastic bag and placed in a fridge. Thus is so that he can check again on the sample should he have any doubts