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Design permeates all aspects of our daily lives, and while most concentrate on high design — that which makes things pretty, work well, and look awesome — some design is purely functional, even if it looks sleek and sexy on the surface. Design in science is just like that.
Scientists work day in, day out with truly exquisitely designed things and never give them a second thought. Most of the equipment — be it medical, lab-based or even in the field — has been honed to perfection by years of optimisation and redesign.
Take the average lab for instance. If you’ve ever stepped foot into one, or just seen one on the goggle box, you’ll know that they’re white or grey, minimalist and full of shiny stuff. But have you ever asked yourself why? Why do scientists surround themselves with sleek-looking glass, clean-brushed metals, and white or grey desks? It’s all about sterilisation, because keeping a lab sterile and germ-free is absolutely essential to good biology, be it medical research, genetic engineering or even creating new life; a sterile environment in which to work is the key to avoiding contamination and therefore making revolutionary breakthroughs possible*.
If you think about your kitchen, it’s a similar environment; flat worktops that you can blast with hateful chemicals to keep them germ free. A biologist’s workbench is a wonderful breeding ground for all sorts of potentially nasty and definitely annoying bugs — hardwearing Formica worktops, without notches, crevices or cracks of any kind, allow thorough decontamination, which helps prevent contamination cock-ups that could ruin literally months, or even years, of work in one hit.
Then we come to the metal and glass that constantly surrounds the lab coat-equipped researcher. It all looks so minimalist, shiny and awesome — rows upon rows of pretty-looking glass bottles filled with exotic and colourful liquids, backed up by a whole host of shiny tools — but, again, it’s all about sterilisation.
The main method of killing any potential contamination in a working lab, on tools and in bottles, flasks and beakers, is a process called autoclaving. Essentially, you stick your object of choice, with its top covered but not sealed (you don’t want an explosion on your hands do you?), into the autoclave and heat it to above 121 degrees Celsius, under pressure, for 20 minutes. Super-hot steam from a water reservoir permeates the object, eradicating practically everything from its surface, making it so clean you could eat off it. There aren’t many materials that can withstand that kind of punishing heating and cooling day in, day out, without being warped, degraded or just plain melted. That’s why scientists are surrounded by beautifully-shaped glass bottles, beakers and conical flasks, filled with all sorts of colourful liquids, along with a whole host of shiny metal tweezers, spatulas, scalpels, scissors, and tongs.
Functional, minimalist design for decontamination’s sake doesn’t stop in the lab though. When you look around the hospital, at the MRI or CT scanner you once had a trip through, it’s all big, rounded and curvy, with smooth lines, and, most importantly, made of a wipe-clean coated metal and plastic — after all, you wouldn’t want to catch the black death off the last diseased person that took a trip through the machine, would you? The materials help prevent germs getting a hold and breeding, while being easy to clean with powerful antiseptics.
We might all be used to minimalist lines, and shiny white materials as an indicator of good aesthetic design these days, what with the kinds of glass-slab phones and aluminium clad computers we use today. But all that style of design started with the need to eradicate germs — function well and truly before aesthetics. Remember that, next time you ogle the latest Apple product or sliver-of-an-aluminium-ultrabook.
*Well, apart from the discovery of penicillin, because the story goes that it was by chance contamination with fungi that Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin.
Image credit: Flasks, Bottles, Lab and MRI from Shutterstock
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Flashy colors and extravagant design distract users from the critical issue at hand.
There is also something you missed, Back when Medicine and Science were starting to gain credibility, design of these objects were used to add credence to whatever the person is surrounded in. Lawyers surround themselves with leather bound colouring books, Engineers with lots of metal doodads (Like myself) and doctors like having clean, clinical environments filled with jars of what could be easily mistaken for wee.
Pharmacists and Chemists did this in the 1800′s as well, often putting large vials of strangely coloured liquids in the window to “show off” their craft.
“The materials help prevent germs getting a hold and breading…”
I hate it when germs bread my stuff…
They taste so much nicer battered than breaded
Tell me about it, it’s like Hansel and Gretel’s have been lost since 1876 in my backyard!
Great article! I enjoyed the nod to Sir Alexander Fleming, must have been written by an Imperial graduate!
Guilty as charged
what tosh. I worked at a number of UK scientific establishments in the 1990s – key features were peeling lino floors, 1950s wooden lab benches, cuboards full of junk (apple III, BBC model A, and oscilloscopes that required a 2-man lift), ovens used to heat pies and mosfets (for annealing experiments), fridges for both Black and White polaroid film and milk (for regular team briefings aka T-breaks). The science was cutting edge, the lab & offices werent – money went into real R&D not the trappings. I believe the situation has “improved” (at least one of the buildings was later demolished).
oops cupboards not cuboards
I’m a scientist and whilst the sterile environment stuff is absolutely correct I chuckled throughout the rest of the article. A heck of a lot of labs are many decades old and so is much of the equipment. In cash-rich times Universities may get new research buildings and some additional equipment funding but the old Heath Robinson machines tend to go with them. Most labs are cluttered, with researchers tripping over each other. Many hours are spent washing up or wheeling broken-down equipment to technicians. Some machines look great but most don’t and there’s nothing too exciting about rows of clear liquids in bottles. It depends what floats your boat.
Well, put it this way, this is the way a lab looks if it gets on TV. I agree, the several labs I’ve worked in were cluttered, but they sure as hell weren’t meant to be, and we got serious stick for it. The monthly purge was pretty much mandatory, although I managed to hold onto my bottle of copper sulphate for near on 4 years.
I used to buy kit like this for a major Pharma company, and while there is some logic in the article, the suppliers and buyers in that market make/want cool looking kit.
Given high margins and comparable products, it’s as much about simple desires and marketing. Especially when the specifier has a huge wad of someone else’s cash!
I work in a medical sciences building. What you say is true. I would also like to add that the autoclave stinks. That is all.
Ha ha, it only stinks when you get media in it!
But, yeah, you’re not half wrong. And when some moron puts acid it in, well, it’s a run for the door moment.
Ever tried dry ice Microcentrifuge tube roulette?
They don’t let me play with anything that has chemicals, radiation or organic material. I’m only allowed near stuff with screens.
Sounds like fun though.
It is. I used to play it in the research labs at Uni – take six Eppendorf tubes, the ones with the clip-over caps, put them in two racks with three pointing at each person, and add a drop of water and a fragment of dry ice to each before closing them over. Each person then has to sit with their face two inches from the rack without flinching.
Warning: trollbait comment follows.
Explains why Apple devices are so minimalist – they need to be wipe-clean due to all the drooling morons who use them!
Trollbait comment ends.
Clearly OP has never been in a lab before, he’s only seen them on television