Now If Only I Could Do the Same Thing To My Brain
Posted by Ace on September 15th, 2010 filed in letters from AcePicked up a razor blade the wallpaper hangers left behind in the stairwell of my apartment building, took it outside, and used it to peel the Sealand residential parking permit sticker off of Gloria. It came off in one piece, and left the glass clean, as if it had never been there…
September 16th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Don’t get me started about razor blades and brains… (unless it was the few times I used a sapphire edged one).
September 17th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Ewwwwww… *laugh*.
Now I totally wanna know about the sapphire-edged blade, though. What was up with that?
September 17th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Well, to quote the manufacturer:
“The sapphire knife is sharper than metal knives can be, and provides significantly improved section quality over traditional razor blades, particularly in brain slice electrophysiology applications. By making a cleaner cut, the surface cells remain alive and intact, thereby available for the researcher to more easily explore the live and responsive interior cells.”
Since I was at one point trying to use tissue from adult brains, which usually didn’t produce good tissue for my work, I needed every help I could get. The sapphire knife turned out not to make much of a difference–but it was way cooler, obviously. :D
It’s less impressive looking than it should be. See here.