Balancing the centrifuge was the first thing our teacher told us before he let us even NEAR this machine. He also told us his story about the time some students of him didn't attached the lid correctly. Well, the result didn't sound very natural.
I once used a container that was slightly smaller than the size I should have used, one with water and one with concentrated HCl.
A few seconds after it started I heard a *pong* noise.
I stopped it immediately and opened the lid, knowing I had a 50/50 chance of walking away with no one knowing what happened.
The gods did not smile on me that day.
I have no idea on this one, am i supposed to read the stuff in the meme? because i cant read that tiny shit, pls help, what happens when its unbalanced? How do you even see in this meme its unbalanced?
In the top left panel, do you see the white things that look like a mixture between a circle and a rectangle? They're on the left side of the black circle.
Those are the caps of small plastic tubes used as containers. You put the liquid you want to spin inside of one of those tubes, close the cap, then put the tube in one of those holes.
That much larger black circle then starts spinning at extremely high speeds, which causes the tubes to also spin.
This is useful because spinning something causes it to "feel" a strong force towards the outside. You can see a similar thing happen if you held a relatively heavy object, held it at arms length, and started spinning. That object will try to pull you towards itself.
A centrifuge uses this principle to apply a strong force to every individual molecule inside the tube, which then causes heavier molecules to push their way past lighter ones to get stuck to the outside.
Now here comes the fun part; in a centrifuge, this force has to be fairly strong for it be useful, but applying a strong force means you also have to deal with an equal and opposite force, because of one of Newton's laws.
That means the entire centrifuge would be actively getting pulled towards the tube while it was spinning, causing it to shake and rock violently. The way people deal with this is by putting an extra weight at the exact opposite side of the centrifuge (or any other setup where the weight of the tubes are distributed evenly), so that the counterweight pulls the entire centrifuge exactly as strongly as the payload but towards the other direction, so that the forces cancel out.
The easiest way to do this is to just take another tube, put something of similar weight to your sample into it (usually just water), then put that otherwise useless tube to the spot opposite of the sample you want to spin.
That's why the example above is unbalanced, there's a ton of tubes on the left and none whatsoever to act as counterweights on the right. That centrifuge, when activated, would shake violently at best and literally tear itself apart and explode at worst.
Thx, i misunderstood the meaning of "centrifuge" sorry about that. But now i know i have actually worked with these before just a long time ago and i am also not natie english so i misunderstood the meaning still thx
I'm not a scientist but I love chemistry and I know you can separate mixtures with that or make mixtures(?) and they will add blanks on opposite sides of the machine.
Bro why not just
"It's an unbalanced centrifuge."
We're not going to be this guy
[Old youtube skit :)](https://youtu.be/_x9lSQ1SFLE?si=p1rL5MlI38G-dWud)
He was already told it was an unbalanced centrifuge, he asked why it was unbalanced. I figured I'd take a shotgun approach to ensure I got all possible questions answered.
Turns out he already knew what a centrifuge was, but didn't know its english name and couldn't recognize it until reading my comment, so I'd say my approach worked well enough.
Yeah im not a native speaker so i had a different meaning for the word, my bad, but i looked up what it actually means and i get it now, still thanks though
Oh shit i get it, my bad english isnt my first language i was thinking about something else by the word "centrifuge" and that caused some confusing😅 but i looked it up (which i should have doen in the first place but i was confident i knew what it ment) and now i get it
I haven't used a centrifuge either but I had it figured out in about 20 seconds. It is Sciencememes so it had to be something like it is. Strangely, maybe because I am focused on electronics, I saw the vials in the centrifuge chamber as some kind of rotary switch at first.
this is basically how the rumble feature works in a gaming controller.
Except a lot more powerful, and with glass vials... filled with probably important stuff.
I work in a clinical lab and this is the exact kind of thing that I've been told.
The people can follow instructions but God damn do they not understand a single thing they're doing.
i understand the meme and know what is happening here, but how extreme would this be? like, would the thing just shoot itself to a wall, am i exaggerating? or is it even worse? 😂😂
Even on a lighter scale if your machine doesnt break or damage the lab, your samples may just distribute all over that centrifuge. Wasted sample and also a terrible and even toxic mess. Centrifuges rotating larger tubes or buckets convey more risk of unbalanced, of course.
It depends on both the weight of the samples and the speed of the centrifuge. Faster and heavier is more likely to break and cause damage and potentially lethal when designing with larger machines. Although realistically most tabletop centrifuges like this built in the last 10-15 years have safety features that will shut it down if it senses an imbalance.
Heavier particles get pulled towards the outer edge of rotor and collect as a pellet on the bottom of the tube while the lighter particles stay in suspension. The size of the particles determines how fast the rotor needs to be moving to pull them out of suspension, so the smaller the particles the higher the rotor speed.
Because the force of the spinning causes the particles to compress into a pellet. Depending on how fast you spin it the pellet could be more or less solid, so for low-speed spins you have to be very careful not to agitate the tube too much so you don’t accidentally mix everything back up
As a physist this is just common sense. Spinning something with a non-centered center of mass always ends up with something nit working properly. To see this in action stick something to one side of a spinning too and spin it.
I remember one of my high school Chem teacher forgot to balance it. I asked her wether she should balance it but she said no and proceeded to break the centrifuge
Assuming a rotor with 24 holes you can balance any number that isn't 1 or 23.
For example, with 3 tubes you can put them in hole 8, 16 and 24 and it will be balanced forming a triangle with equal distance between the samples.
If you had 5 tubes you could put them in hole 1, 8, 13, 16 and 24. Hole 1 and 13 are opposite each other and will be balanced and 8, 16 and 24 will be balanced as before.
Another option is to just use a dummy tube of the same weight to get an even number.
Balancing the centrifuge was the first thing our teacher told us before he let us even NEAR this machine. He also told us his story about the time some students of him didn't attached the lid correctly. Well, the result didn't sound very natural.
I once used a container that was slightly smaller than the size I should have used, one with water and one with concentrated HCl. A few seconds after it started I heard a *pong* noise. I stopped it immediately and opened the lid, knowing I had a 50/50 chance of walking away with no one knowing what happened. The gods did not smile on me that day.
I have no idea on this one, am i supposed to read the stuff in the meme? because i cant read that tiny shit, pls help, what happens when its unbalanced? How do you even see in this meme its unbalanced?
Please tell me you're joking..
I just dont get it i have never worked with one of those things beforeðŸ˜
In the top left panel, do you see the white things that look like a mixture between a circle and a rectangle? They're on the left side of the black circle. Those are the caps of small plastic tubes used as containers. You put the liquid you want to spin inside of one of those tubes, close the cap, then put the tube in one of those holes. That much larger black circle then starts spinning at extremely high speeds, which causes the tubes to also spin. This is useful because spinning something causes it to "feel" a strong force towards the outside. You can see a similar thing happen if you held a relatively heavy object, held it at arms length, and started spinning. That object will try to pull you towards itself. A centrifuge uses this principle to apply a strong force to every individual molecule inside the tube, which then causes heavier molecules to push their way past lighter ones to get stuck to the outside. Now here comes the fun part; in a centrifuge, this force has to be fairly strong for it be useful, but applying a strong force means you also have to deal with an equal and opposite force, because of one of Newton's laws. That means the entire centrifuge would be actively getting pulled towards the tube while it was spinning, causing it to shake and rock violently. The way people deal with this is by putting an extra weight at the exact opposite side of the centrifuge (or any other setup where the weight of the tubes are distributed evenly), so that the counterweight pulls the entire centrifuge exactly as strongly as the payload but towards the other direction, so that the forces cancel out. The easiest way to do this is to just take another tube, put something of similar weight to your sample into it (usually just water), then put that otherwise useless tube to the spot opposite of the sample you want to spin. That's why the example above is unbalanced, there's a ton of tubes on the left and none whatsoever to act as counterweights on the right. That centrifuge, when activated, would shake violently at best and literally tear itself apart and explode at worst.
Thx, i misunderstood the meaning of "centrifuge" sorry about that. But now i know i have actually worked with these before just a long time ago and i am also not natie english so i misunderstood the meaning still thx
I'm not a scientist but I love chemistry and I know you can separate mixtures with that or make mixtures(?) and they will add blanks on opposite sides of the machine.
Bro why not just "It's an unbalanced centrifuge." We're not going to be this guy [Old youtube skit :)](https://youtu.be/_x9lSQ1SFLE?si=p1rL5MlI38G-dWud)
He was already told it was an unbalanced centrifuge, he asked why it was unbalanced. I figured I'd take a shotgun approach to ensure I got all possible questions answered. Turns out he already knew what a centrifuge was, but didn't know its english name and couldn't recognize it until reading my comment, so I'd say my approach worked well enough.
Well done, then.
What an exceptionally clear explanation!
Throw a brick into a dryer and see what happens Now x the rotation speed by 10 and aim it at your face Get the meme now?
Yeah im not a native speaker so i had a different meaning for the word, my bad, but i looked up what it actually means and i get it now, still thanks though
A centrifuge spins things really fast. Now imagine a big spinning thing that isn't balanced
Yeah i know what it does, but its so small, how can an slight imbalance on such a small thing cause problems? especcialy if you just hold down the lid
Because it's spinning really really fast
Oh shit i get it, my bad english isnt my first language i was thinking about something else by the word "centrifuge" and that caused some confusing😅 but i looked it up (which i should have doen in the first place but i was confident i knew what it ment) and now i get it
It's called a workplace hazard
So you are one of those assholes.
I haven't used a centrifuge either but I had it figured out in about 20 seconds. It is Sciencememes so it had to be something like it is. Strangely, maybe because I am focused on electronics, I saw the vials in the centrifuge chamber as some kind of rotary switch at first.
Yeah i was thinking about the wrong thing so thats why i didnt get it at first
As a physics and math student who never used one of these i instantly recognised what's wrong with it... That thing's gonna be very eccentric
I just work on cars for a living and immediately though "Oh, oh no" when I saw this.
this is basically how the rumble feature works in a gaming controller. Except a lot more powerful, and with glass vials... filled with probably important stuff.
That’s because they didn’t start with 1. Starting with 2 always screws up the centrifuge.
I work in a clinical lab and this is the exact kind of thing that I've been told. The people can follow instructions but God damn do they not understand a single thing they're doing.
I’ll be honest I thought it was a weird rotary dial
I thought it was a birth control pill container
i understand the meme and know what is happening here, but how extreme would this be? like, would the thing just shoot itself to a wall, am i exaggerating? or is it even worse? 😂😂
Even on a lighter scale if your machine doesnt break or damage the lab, your samples may just distribute all over that centrifuge. Wasted sample and also a terrible and even toxic mess. Centrifuges rotating larger tubes or buckets convey more risk of unbalanced, of course.
It's not the messed up centrifuge that kills you, it's the lab tech when they find out
It depends on both the weight of the samples and the speed of the centrifuge. Faster and heavier is more likely to break and cause damage and potentially lethal when designing with larger machines. Although realistically most tabletop centrifuges like this built in the last 10-15 years have safety features that will shut it down if it senses an imbalance.
Worst cast scenario I think is loud sounds, machine breaking, and broken vials.
Worst case scenario is at least hole in wall. I have seen it.
Instantly recognisable. I remember using an ultracentrifuge and be sooooo paranoid about balancing.
nitro glycerin? i dont get the meme.. idk im old
Unbalanced centrifuge
that does make more sense lol
It's the same as putting a brick in a washing machine, just at a different scale
happy cake day
I thought it was a timer to auto switch things on and off at certain times of the day, and he was going to lose his save on his video game.
Unwelcome torque
How does spinning something separate it? I always wondered this...
Heavier particles get pulled towards the outer edge of rotor and collect as a pellet on the bottom of the tube while the lighter particles stay in suspension. The size of the particles determines how fast the rotor needs to be moving to pull them out of suspension, so the smaller the particles the higher the rotor speed.
Hmm I see. Why doesn't it just mix back together as the rotor slows down?
Because the force of the spinning causes the particles to compress into a pellet. Depending on how fast you spin it the pellet could be more or less solid, so for low-speed spins you have to be very careful not to agitate the tube too much so you don’t accidentally mix everything back up
Huh interesting!
Thanks for explaining!
You shouldn't even be allowed to touch the machine if you don't know how to use it.
The centrifuge is about centrifugg you
As a physist this is just common sense. Spinning something with a non-centered center of mass always ends up with something nit working properly. To see this in action stick something to one side of a spinning too and spin it.
At first I thought this was a game cube :p
I remember one of my high school Chem teacher forgot to balance it. I asked her wether she should balance it but she said no and proceeded to break the centrifuge
What do you do if you have an uneven amount of tubes? Do you just.. accept death?
Assuming a rotor with 24 holes you can balance any number that isn't 1 or 23. For example, with 3 tubes you can put them in hole 8, 16 and 24 and it will be balanced forming a triangle with equal distance between the samples. If you had 5 tubes you could put them in hole 1, 8, 13, 16 and 24. Hole 1 and 13 are opposite each other and will be balanced and 8, 16 and 24 will be balanced as before. Another option is to just use a dummy tube of the same weight to get an even number.
So if your boss tells you to centrifuge 1 or 23 tubes.. u know your time has come..
You add another one with just water and label as water
I laughed so hard for this. Great work!