Having to make stock solutions is a part of everyday lab life…a tedious, but necessary, one. So why not make the process as streamlined as possible? Here are a few little tricks I picked up while I was still in the lab: Check to see if anybody has a tried and tested recipe – why [...]

They’re easy numbers to take for granted, so it’s a good exercise once in a while to remind ourselves what pH, pKa and pI stand for: pH—the measure of acidity. It’s the negative logarithm of the proton concentration. pKa—an association constant. It’s the negative logarithm of the ratio of dissociated acid and conjugated base, over [...]

Is there anything more tedious than pH-ing a solution? Standing there adjusting the pH of your buffer, adding acid or alkali drop by drop until you get to the right pH… With pH-ing being so boring, it’s in our best interests to keep the equipment in good working order so that we needn’t fuss over [...]