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Sad Valentine's Day Story #2

This is sad in a different way than my first Valentine's Day story. The lab I work in is eleven people, split into three "bays." Mine is the middle bay and is comprised of Kristin, Sam, and Shaojuan in addition to myself. Someone was distributing white carnations on Valentine's Day this year (I'm still a bit confused as to who it was or for what purpose), and both Kristin and Shaojuan ended up with one.

Somehow the conversation turned to what dorky science projects one could perform using white carnations. We decided to perform a demonstration of capillary action and carnation physiology.

Here are the two carnations. The one on the left (in the graduated cylinder) is in a dilute solution of Orange G, while the flower on the right (in the Erlenmeyer flask) is in a solution of Bromphenyl Blue:

Here are the same two carnations after three days:

And here are the same flowers after two weeks:

The blue flower is my favorite. Here's a close-up so you can see the veins that lead from the stem to the tips of the petals:

Pretty neat, eh? Science is fun!

Comments

  1. jennifer7:35 PM

    cool experiment! congrats on your marriage...i'm a bit behind given i just found out in the ET newsletter...:)
    hope all is well!
    jennifer mosier franklin PC92 :)

    ReplyDelete

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