Today I Learned:
1) Apparently you can run DNA gels without a dye -- you can just put it on a nice UV-fluorescent background, shine a UV light on it, and the DNA will show up as dark bands.
2) Apparently some people think that poinsettias are poisonous? But they're not. There are tens of thousands of cases of people being admitted to hospitals after eating poinsettias... and zero cases of those people needing medical treatment. There is also no known LD50 for poinsettias, because no toxic dose could be found.
3) ...what the inside of a servo looks like! That turbidostat I mentioned in the last TIL? It has a servo that's probably bad, so we took it apart to look for problems. We didn't find any (though after taking it apart and putting it back together, it seemed to work better), but I got to see the inside. First impressions -- far more gears than I was expected. I was expecting one, maybe two, and there were more like four. That's required because most servos have their motor shaft geared to a potentiometer (a resistor whose value changes based on the position of a dial) that gives feedback about how far the motor has moved.
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