General+observations+that+all+participants+might+find+useful+--+BH

Rather than repeat my observations on every experiment, I will use this page to record ideas that I think might be useful to multiple participants. This seems to me to be entirely within the spirit of an ONS contest but if other judges feel differently go ahead and delete this page.

1. saturation -- some solutes dissolve very slowly in particular solvents; as yet I have seen no one testing the effect of extended mixing 2. Rotational velocity in rpm is not much use unless I have the same centrifuge you do, or know the radius of its rotor: report your centrifugation values in multiples of g! 3. pipetting of volatile solvents -- there may be an accuracy issue here, because volatiles tend to build up pressure in the pipette tip and barrel (above the payload) and force themselves out of the tip. For instance, mol biol labs typically keep acetone, ethanol and chloroform at -20C to reduce this effect. I have not noticed any participants addressing this -- perhaps chemists have better pipettes than biologists? 4. speaking of error, no one seems to be trying to estimate it in their measurements or propagate it to their final values. I can think of at least one good reason not to bother doing this (apart from the fact that it's difficult!), but would like to see participants discussing it.

5. To date, no one is doing a really good job of standardizing their method of ascertaining saturation; the best so far is when Jenny looked at the effect of temperature. I'd really like to see a comparison between "I vortexed it until no more went in" and something a bit more systematic -- e.g. slow stirring overnight. (That is, "it looked done" is fine for a first run, but should be verified by longer mixing.) We're already seeing several compounds where rate of entry into solution is an issue, and that will only get worse as we get more compounds examined.