just before the easter holidays in april, i took a practical molecular biology class.
in a period of 4 days, we did a lot of cool laboratory stuff that i only knew in theory, from books or tv – like replicating dna in vitro, making it visible (using chemicals and ultraviolet light), cutting it with different enzymes, inserting it into bacteria to make even more dna, …
everything about it was pretty abstract – we were working with μl (microliters) of substances. that’s the 1000th part of a milliliter! and sometimes, part the objective was to work with tiny pellets we couldn’t even see (“it should be about *there*. make sure you don’t screw it up, or you don’t have anything left to work with!”).