16234/Science Lab, Titans style

Science Lab, Titans style
Date of Scene:	01 November 2023
Location:	Labs - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Caitlin Fairchild, Xiomara Rojas, Wally West

---

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"All right, fundamentals of chemistry," Caitlin tells Wally. She's at a whiteboard, wearing her (new) white labcoat over a set of pink scrubs. Her sleeves are rolled back to her elbows and her hair's back in a messy bun, mainained by the stylus and probe she's jammed into her red hair absentmindedly.

"Biological chemistry is a broad branch of chemistry that analyzes the chemical makeup of our metabolism. You might hear people talking about 'organic' chemistry, but that's a bit of a misnomer. O-chem is the study of organic molecules not necessarily in a living organism," she clarifies.

The whiteboard is covered with simple chemical reactions, Lewis structures, and plenty of chemical notation on adjacent topics. "We'll do some fun experiments, like culturing common bacteria or cooking an egg with no heat," she supplies.

"Am I going too fast?"

Xiomara Rojas has posed:
Often things are delivered to the Tower, pass through security and are left to be moved where they go by someone with a clue as to where it should go. In this particular case the item in question is a very large box marked 'lab equipment' and the 'where it should go' is clearly the lab.

A few of the Titans could pick it up and move it as is, the rest would have required assistance, but for Crush it was simple enough to pick up and head to the lab with. She was careful, in case something was fragile, but she enters the lab quietly just in time for Caitlin's lesson... speech... explanation of something.

Wally West has posed:
Ever see someone writing so fast their pen starts to smoke?

Wally is wearing red scrubs to be supportive of a positive lab environment. Yes, there were times where Wally was staring instead of listening, but he looks at that whiteboard as he mimics the drawings down to the literal wire. "You've got my full attention! I'm down!" Little do either of them know that these 'fun experiments' will be vital in so many ways.

He lifts his hand, as if to question.

"Quick question! Do bacteria grow faster in a high-friction environment?" He questions the teacher (Caitlin) but otherwise he falls quiet and looks like the picture perfect student!

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"/Excellent/ question Wally, thank you," Caitlin says, and daubs the marker in her hand vaguely in his direction in approval. She turns back to the board and starts writing out a long equation full of letters. "This is the solution to calculating expoenential growth of bacterium," she says. "You can extrapolate this to any animal in a resource-rich environment," she adds.

"The question isn't really friction, though, it's heat build-up," she tells Wally. "Some bacteria and cells are thermophiles. They don't just endure high temperatures, they thrive in it." She draws a squiggly looking cell on the board and labels it 'S. Solfataricus'. "You can modify this equation by inserting the heat variable here," she says, and draws out *another* long equation describing how to calculate ideal temperatures for growth, and draws a line from it to the original equation.

"Oh hey! Crush!" Caitlin greets the alien Titan. "Do you have something for me?" she asks, looking at the box in Crush's hands. "....I'm assuming you weren't the one who scratched out 'flammable' on that box," she says with a wary note.

Xiomara Rojas has posed:
Standing there holding the over large box with a very confused expression on her face, Crush just sort of nods a few times. "I don't mean to interrupt," she stutters, shifting slightly, almost staring at Caitlin and not the board.

After a breath she shakes it off to add, "I didn't scratch nothin out, just saw the box downstairs meant to be moved up here, so... thought I'd help out. What are you uh... teaching?"

Wally West has posed:
/YUS/!

An excellent question! Wally's good at this! He listens about thermophilic bacteria and how they can grow in a resource-rich environment ( S. Solfataricus for example). Wally hums, standing up from where he was seated as he looks at the board, lifting a hand to stroke his chin. "So...with the heat variable, is the /speed/ of duplication or cell division increased in water? Or does it not need water and only needs a temperature where it can thrive?" He picks up a marker and draws a little H2O molecule. Wally ALWAYS picked up things very quickly.

Except cooking.

....we don't talk about cooking.

He turns his attention to Crush. "Oh hey! By all means, it's good to see ya." He gasps. "Did you bring snacks?!"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin walks away from the board to take the box (carefully) from Crush, flashing her a quick and grateful smile for being so considerate. "Nono, it's fine, this is--" she looks through the flaps. "Yeah, this is just some old lab equipment I've been meaning to bring down here," she assures Crush. "C'mon, some of this stuff will be useful to you when you start classes," she urges, and gives Xiomara's hand a little encouraging tug towards the whiteboard.

"We're getting a little too specific here, but you're thinking in the right direction," Caitlin says. "If we had some, we could set up some experimental cultures to test it with various heats and liquid environments," she suggests.

Caitlin gestures to include Crush. "Science is a tradition of asking smart questions and writing down the results," she explains. "There's no great mystery to it. The hard part is sorting out the static conditions from the variables, and trying to account for *every* variable," she says. "So for something like this, we'd need... five dishes at varying heats, and then five dishes at stable heat, but with varying amounts of water," she explains. "I think they grow in ... some national park in Montana?" she hazards.

Xiomara Rojas has posed:
Permitting the box to be taken, Crush was just about to say something when Caitlin touched her hand. First was to deal with being touched at all, and that was done by blinking a few times. Next was dealing with being tugged and that was handled by her eyes going wide. Anything said after that was missed entirely, at least the first few words, so her brain kicked in somewhere around '... too specific.'

"I... started with the basics," she manages to blurt out, the only context to that being in her head so she adds, "... with my classes. The required stuff first."

Clearing her throat a couple of times, she reaches into the pocket of her vest and pulls out a king sized Snickers that she tosses to Wally.

Wally West has posed:
*ZOOOM*

Wally looks at Cait and back to Xiomara. "Old lab tech? Need help fixing it? I've been working with Cyborg on building up some engineering smarts. Nowhere near a genius, but I've picked up some stuff." Wally smiles faintly, trying to be helpful, trying to be /useful/. But he catches himself and clears his throat. "Sorry, still working on that." On toning it down, on not being overexcited.

Speed is it's own hurtle and one has to be careful not to trip over your own feet.

Case in point. "Sorry, sorry...lots of questions and too little time you know?" But to know he's in the right direction is a MASSIVE help. "We could probably get some? But I don't know how to safely collect it." He offers with a shrug. "And I'm worried I'd move too fast for viability." He nods though. "Scientific method. I dig it."

He looks to Crush then. "We can learn together! Come on, it'll be fun. We can struggle to get math, you know?" He sees the snickers and his eyes go wide. "My hero!" and he accepts it with a solid catch, unwrapping it and giving it a bite, looking satisfied as energy slowly restores!

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Basics are just fine," Caitlin assures Crush with an earnest smile. "Everyone, me included, should go back to them once in a while. Basics aren't as sexy as research papers, but getting good data is more important than generating 'good' results."

Caitlin walks over to the workbench and pulls down from an upper cupboard, a tray labelled 'sample dishes, STERILE'. She carefully cracks one open and shows it to the two others.

"We sterilize these in the astringent wash every time they're used," she explains. "And we use them all the time. So inside of here is-- was," she amends, "a sterile environment. No germs or bugs or anything. Once you open it, you want to put your sample into it as soon as possible. Always grip it by the edge, never by the lip," she says, demonstrating. "Then you'll use something like--" she casts around, and picks up a sealed cotton swab. "Again, sterile. Once you use it, you close it up and discard of it safely," she says. "Then you clamp your sample shut, seal it with tape, and send it off to whomever."

"The biggest thing is trying not to add factors to the sample. If you breathe on it, sneeze, if you walk under a dusty ceiling or wet canopy, it can make the batch un-usable. Sometimes, you're stuck with what you're stuck with," she admits, "but that's where you write it down clearly and keep good field notes." She offers the instruments to Wally and Crush to play with.

Xiomara Rojas has posed:
Finally regaining full control of her senses, Crush steps over to watch Caitlin and to listen. She offers Wally a thumbs up regarding the Snickers, the Czarnian often carries random treats in her vest for their flavor, not for any requirement on her part to eat.

Not entirely certain what she's meant to do with the offered items, she takes the time to study them rather intently. She's had basic science classes, and one biology class, but they were high school level and there for way below all this information.

"How do you know if you've contaminated it?" she asks with a lifted brow. "I mean, couldn't you destroy everything just by having a breeze in the room?"

Wally West has posed:
Internal note: write a research paper.

But she's right. Repeatability and good data is more important than getting data that a group of people consider good. Of course, it's difficult for Wally to know if it's 'good' data since Hd doesn't know everything yet, but...

Here's hoping soon!

He follows to the workbench and sample dishes that Caitlin produces. "...so, rule of thumb, don't use the same tool twice. Sounds simple enough. Don't touch the sensitive material and use it quickly." he nods softly. "And take NOTES ABOUT EVERYTHING." He doesn't yell it, but he does seem to be clicking a pen rapidly enough to potentially break it as he jots down a quick message at the top of a page that reads: 'write down everything you observe'.

Like Crush, he studies the items in question, humming as he looks it over. "I think that's an awesome question. I feel like I could contaminate everything by tripping."