Comment on Wobble wobble
clif@lemmy.world 1 day agoFirst frame isa centrifuge that spins samples at high speed to separate the components in them (I think that’s the purpose, not a scientist).
I hear that if it’s unbalanced, bad things happen, because you’re not spinning an unbalanced rotor at high speeds.
I honestly was coming to check the comments to see if anyone had experience with it so I could ask how bad it is.
to separate the conponents
Scientist here. That’s what it’s for. A centrifuge makes the tubes experience very high accelerations, like 100 times the force of gravity, to separate liquids and solids by density. For example you could put blood in there and get a layer of red blood cells and a layer of plasma stacked on top of each other.
More like 16,000 x g for a normal desktop centrifuge and 80,000 x g+ for an ultracentrifuge
The funeral depicted is a viral video where the pallbearers are dancing/swaying so it’s like you’ll die and even your casket will be moving afterwards.
I work in a lab. I’ve seen centrifuges try to walk off the counter before.
I thought it was a birth control pill box.
I got weird rotary phone, GameCube, then that funeral video. I sort of thought this was some millennial meme I’m too out of the loop to understand. Lemmy is full of those.
It depends on the speed and size of the centrifuge, the mass of the load, and the magnitude of the imbalance. Someone else mentioned an ultracentrifuge, typically a large, washing-machine-like device that can spin larger loads at high velocity. The amount of energy released if they become significantly unbalanced is pretty huge: they have a containment layer, but some could kill you if the load got through and hit you.
On the flip side, I may have intentionally ran unbalanced microcentrifuges a few (many, it was many) times as a grad student because I was too tired and lazy to make a counterweight. I just held it down with fairly firm pressure and it was fine. That’s not very good for its bearings, though. Sorry lab manager!
I was thinking wheel balancer
I’m not sure about the more classic devices but a lot of game controllers and phones these days use linear motors or similar piezoelectric devices for vibration. For instance Apple’s “Taptic Engine”.
Eheran@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The centrifuge would not run like that, it noticed the vibrations and turns off. They had that “feature” for decades now.
clif@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s awesome… And also funny that it had to be added. Thanks for the info!
I still want to know what happens on an old one without vibration detection or if it was “broken”. I assume something like an unbalanced washing machine but on a smaller scale? It just going out for a stroll :)
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Science is a whole lot of adjusting after someone died. Like, it’s mostly been that.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
So is OSHA!
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
ehrs.upenn.edu/…/ultracentrifuge-explosion-damage…
This is a famous example from when they didn’t have alarms. The don’t just happily wobble across the room.
Fluke@feddit.uk 20 hours ago
IMO, you missed the best bit off:
Eheran@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh that can absolutely end in a desaster. Like not breaking when driving a car when you absolutely should.
MML@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet this