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Scientists - before & after

What's with all the buttons in the before pictures? Did anyone else notice how all the lab coats had a long row of buttons?

As a side note, one of our fellow grad students walked into class wearing a lab coat today and everyone started laughing at him. I didn't even know people still wore those.
 
eri said:
What's with all the buttons in the before pictures? Did anyone else notice how all the lab coats had a long row of buttons?

As a side note, one of our fellow grad students walked into class wearing a lab coat today and everyone started laughing at him. I didn't even know people still wore those.
Click to expand...

PPE (personal protective equipment including labcoats) is compulsory where I work.
 
In my grad lab, we always wore labcoats when potential investors were coming in. "We have investors coming to the lab in a couple weeks. How many labcoats should I order?"

However, I think we were *supposed* to wear them all the time. Nobody enforced it, though.
 
Heh. At Bell Labs, some of the older physical researchers wore lab coats, and to some extent they were a "status item".

Most of us had nothing to do with them. Your average DSP researcher wears a calculator and a look of abstraction, and has chalk/whiteboard ink all over both hands. :)
 
When the Beatles first started working with George Martin he was supposed to wear a white coat according to EMI's rules.
 
Lab coats were pretty common in the lab i worked in over the summer and last fall. Most researchers had their own embroidered coats, and those that didn't just wore the standard issue labcoats. I would wear mine frequently when performing PCR, gel electrophoresis, or other procedures involving potentially dangerous reagents. It was pretty fun, but now I'm onto bigger and better things.
 
For molecular biology, we all had to wear lab coats at all times. They were to be autoclaved at the end of the semester.

A couple of girls started drawing on their coats, one drawing per week. I think those weren't autoclaved.
 
Hmmm...I think that the students who drew the scientists like regular people were missing the point. If you're going to make a drawing that is identifiable as a "scientist" you should draw him/her in a labcoat. True, they do not wear them all the time, or even most of the time. But, that would make it easy to identify the picture and makes it undenyably a scientist (or a photo technician, pharmascist, doctor)

If somebody asks you to draw an astronaut, do you draw a picture of Neil Armstrong going to the supermarket? Do you draw a picture of John Glenn eating breakfast?

If somebody asks you to draw a picture of a general, do you draw Colin Powel cleaning his garage?

NO! You draw them as they are normally thought of.


Also...I have had a few professors who had a tendency to wear labcoats. One was a chemistry professor who wore it eventhough he was teaching class and not getting his hands dirty in the lab. Also, I had a physics professor who wore one.

I think they wear them because they're hella cool!


I don't think we should say scientists "have to" wear labcoats. We should say they "get to."

I wear a labcoat too sometimes, but I don't have a Phd or a nobel prize or anything, so I'd be a poser if I wore it all the time. Instead, I wear it whenever I had a good excuse to. Such as when handeling volitile chemicals...like putting gas in the lawnmower.

-Steve
 
Lab coats aren't really a uniform by which scientists can be recognised. They have a clear role and that is to protect the wearer in the lab and then when removed before leaving the lab, contamination of clean areas such as where food is eaten, is minimised.

Hospitals are seem to be poor at recognising this. Medics only really wear their white coat and stethoscope so that they can be recognised. When in reality they are probably spreading bacteria and viruses.
 
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