Prospects With A Bachelor’s Degree Much Better Than Without But There Is A Catch

 College Writing I: Essay #1 

Student: Gibson, John 

Professor: Michael Baron 

University Of Massachusetts, Lowell,  

Jan 30, 2024 

Prospects With A Bachelor’s Degree Much Better Than Without 

But There Is A Catch 

I am a fourth-year student majoring in biology and taking extra courses in engineering. My GRE math score is a perfect 800. I am a Kennedy Merit Scholarship recipient. During my first three years at the university, I often encountered one or two classmates who clung to me as lab partners to help with science, organic, and biochemistry problems in every lab-oriented course. They came out of nowhere, completely lost, and immediately expected me to be their friend. Affirmative action preferential admission likely admitted them. Having to help them pushed me to study harder and be better prepared. My cumulative GPA is 3.952. I am taking the first-year breadth of knowledge courses in my last year at the university to fulfill the degree requirement before graduation. I witnessed the demographic shift in classrooms from the past three years to the current semester due to the Supreme Court’s repeal of affirmative action in college admissions two semesters ago. There have not been classmates who clung to partnering with me in lab courses in the last two semesters, even though I am taking more science lab classes than ever before. My thesis is that there is a moral problem in turning away the needy, who need the degree to better their life, and some replacement of affirmative action to reduce class segregation deserves research if only I can remind people in the power group of the reality on the ground.  

Reality on the ground: Americans with a four-year college degree have much higher incomes than those without it. According to Professor Dalton Conley’s sociology textbook, “You May Ask Yourself,” the average lifetime earning of an American with a four-year college degree is “$1,500,000,” 1.5 million dollars more than an American without it (Conley, p. 58). Sociology courses emphasize the social construct of humans that the job market has stratification correlated to different salary levels and that pay differences naturally fall in place. Professor Conley’s textbook does not explicitly state that a bachelor’s degree causes a gain of 1.5 million dollars for a lifetime. Instead, the textbook provides arithmetics of a complex calculation between the loss of earnings during the four years of study for someone who pursues the degree and the trade job pay curve. Schaefer’s Sociology Matters textbook, a year ago, omitted the 1.5 million dollar difference.  

Reality on the ground: High-pay trade jobs like electricians still pay less than counterpart electrical engineering positions with a bachelor's degree requirement. According to the textbook, “You May Ask Yourself,” the percentage of electricians with a bachelor's degree in the USA, at 7%, is the lowest among 14 wide-ranging categories of occupations, including bartenders, teachers, and armed force personnel. According to the U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics, the median wage of all electricians is 60 thousand USD per year, while the mean wage of an electrical engineer is 114 thousand USD per year (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). There is an air of prestige given to the field of electrical engineering. The Bureau Of Labor Statistics has detailed categories of 20 industries that employ electrical engineers. The lowest-earning industry for an electrical engineer has an annual wage of 95 thousand USD; the highest-earning industry for an electrical engineer has a yearly salary of 164 thousand USD. In contrast, the statistics for electricians are not detailed, and industries are not categorized. 

Reality on the ground: Four-year colleges give people a sense of calm and serenity. They have sufficient endowments. Four-year colleges have coffee shops and outdoor seating to provide a relaxed atmosphere. It is possible that some Bachelor Of Arts program professors have abandoned office hour meetings in the office and opted to sit in friendly seatings for office hours. In contrast, due to budget constraints, vocational schools and community colleges logically have fewer facilities. The University Of Massachusetts, Lowell's endowment is 149 million USD, with 18 thousand students, over 8 thousand USD per student annually, according to The University Of Massachusetts Foundation (Endowment Overview). According to Northern Essex Community College, the endowment of Northern Essex Community College is 6 million USD, with 5 thousand students, less than 1.2 thousand USD per student per year, seven times smaller than UMass, Lowell (From Equity Talk to Equity Walk). Contrasting the serenity of 4-year colleges, 2-year colleges’ settings are logically more hectic.  

Reality on the ground: Secrets of the old world and continental civilizations are revealed to Bachelor of Arts and other Bachelor’s degree students to relieve them from guilt and pity. According to YaleCourses, Professor Tamar Gendler pointed out that Plato's philosophy influences all of today’s Western intellectuals without exception (Gendler, 2012). In book chapter 5 of Plato’s Republic, the upper ruling class called the ruled commoners “foster-fathers” according to Benjamin Jowett’s translation (Jowett). There was an air of harmony and piety for the ruling class to call commoners foster fathers. Father is a relationship term in a family—the piety in the Republic went from the upper class to the lower class. There was no guilt about education enforcing top-down hierarchy if a school teaches the reader of the Republic that all humans had a common origin, a small, physical family, and the inverted, meshed class hierarchy was just a division of labor in the family of mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam. There was no pity for low exam scores or rejection of education because no student was “left behind” in Socrates’s education system, according to Professor John Kaag’s Introduction to Ethics. For comparison, today’s four-year colleges have a relaxed atmosphere with bagel shops recreating the family home setting. In contrast, trade schools do not give credit for studying literature. The electrician’s exam covers calculations of workday problems and cold, hard physical facts and legal codes. There are no credits for reading The Republic for students in trade schools or for reading David Thoreau’s Walden for students in community colleges. There is no relief. 

Reality on the ground: “Secrets of the universe” are openly flaunted in four-year colleges with no shame in admitting to being a nerd or a geek. In the film Good Will Hunting, MIT professor Lambeau joked about himself being a “lowly” professor in the first scene for making good money with math that does not connect to people or industry to lift him out of the academic setting nor promote his position (Affleck et al.). Artificial intelligence projects received federal funding in 1957 for nine years to make language translators, only to be canceled in 1966 with no functional products produced, according to U. C. Berkley professor Stuart Russell (Russell, 2010). In Good Will Hunting, the main character, Will, played by Matt Damon, is as intelligent as any MIT student. However, the American class segregation system does not allow him a proper career path for stable jobs. The lead female character, Scarlet, a Harvard student, utilized Will’s help for her sophomore homework. Scarlet applied for medical school and transferred to California after a year of meeting Will. Will got a job offer as a code breaker in Boston, “probably doing long divisions for the next 50 years” (Affleck et al.). Willy rejected such a job offer as any sane person who does not want to do long divisions every day for life.  

Reality on the ground: Only seven percent of electricians have a bachelor’s degree and know, for sure, that the Western intellects are taught in schools to respect the working class people as “foster fathers.” The other ninety-three percent of electricians may think that the upper class of elites is here to exploit their labor and that higher education is all about exploiting people with low incomes. The working class may think that the upper class pities them for their low exam scores, even though that is not part of traditional Western values. The college credential barriers kept the working class in the dark. Scarlet told Willy that she would only break up with him and move to California if he told her, “I don’t love you.” Willy said the four words out of distrust, and the couple broke up, inevitably, as predicted by the human social construct that always segregates and breaks up people by class, except that, this time, the person that hurt most was a Harvard-trained medical school student, part of the people in the power group. 

Works Cited  

Affleck, Ben, et al. Good Will Hunting. Arthaus, 2015.  

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Electricians : Occupational Outlook Handbook.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6 Sept. 2023, www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electricians.htm. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.  

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Electrical Engineers.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25 Apr. 2023, www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172071.htm. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.  

Conley, Dalton. You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist. 7th ed., W. W. Norton, 2021. 

Gendler, T. (2012, April 5). 2. The Ring of Gyges: Morality and Hypocrisy [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved December 10, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTGc1Pyp-Jc 

“Endowment Overview.” University of Massachusetts Foundation, www.umassfoundation.org/s/1355/22/interior.aspx?sid=1355&gid=1&pgid=6792. Accessed 10 Feb. 2024.  

“From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Harvard and Massachusetts Community Colleges.” Running the Campus - NECC President Lane Glenn Shares Stories and Perspectives on Leadership, Higher Education, and Going the Extra Mile, president.necc.mass.edu/from-equity-talk-to-equity-walk-harvard-and-massachusetts-community-colleges/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2024.  

Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for College Writing: A Rhetorical Reader and Guide. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018.  

Russell, Stuart Jonathan, et al. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Prentice Hall, 2010. 

“The Internet Classics Archive: The Republic by Plato.” Trans. by Benjamin Jowett, The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato, classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.6.v.html. Accessed 01 Feb. 2024.  

 

Quantitative Comparison Of Micropipette Use Between First Stop And Second Stop When Withdrawing A Fluid

 University Of Massachusetts, Lowell

Biochemistry Techniques, Lab1

Students: John Gibson, Caelin Davidson, Nilab Mohmand

Spring 2024

Quantitative Comparison Of Micropipette Use Between First Stop And Second Stop When Withdrawing A Fluid

Abstract

Proper and improper uses of a micropipette are performed in this experiment for training purposes. Specifically, the proper use of pressing a micropipette’s plunger to the “first stop” and the improper use of pressing the plunger to the “second stop” for withdrawing a fluid is tested. The resulting pipetting volumes are compared and contrasted to give a quantitative perspective of the importance of using a micropipette according to standard usage instructions. 

Introduction

Pipetting is essential for transferring fluids between containers in any chemistry laboratory. Larger scale pipetting, such as between 10mL and 50mL, can be accomplished with bulb pipettes. The bulb of a bulb pipette is first deflated to give it a suction capacity; then, a release knob allows the fluid to be withdrawn from a container. A medium-scale glass pipettor with a sliding plunger can pipette between 1mL and 10mL. Micropipettes are essential in molecular biology laboratories for pipetting below 1000 μL. Micropipettes are available in different sizes, such as P20, P200, and P2000, for volumes of 20 μL, 200 μL, and 2000 μL, respectively.

Most laboratory workers, scientists, and students are instructed to withdraw a specific volume by pressing the thumb plunger of a micropipette to its “first stop” and then suctioning the volume of a liquid. It is commonly known that the “first stop” gives the precise suction volume.

In contrast, the “second stop” of the plunger is used to expel the fluid because the “second stop” displaces more fluid that may be retained in the micropipette tip by capillary effects and other intermolecular forces. However, the exact extra volume displacement by the “second stop” is not always quantized in all laboratories. This study hypothesizes that the “first stop” technique is proper and should yield more accurate volume dispensing than stopping the plunger at the second stop when withdrawing fluid. 

The purpose and aim of this study is to quantitatively categorize the difference in dispensing between using the “first stop” and “second stop” to withdraw a fluid in a laboratory. Two advantages can be obtained with quantitative categorization of proper and improper pipetting techniques. Firstly, a quantitative characterization of a micropipette educates laboratory workers on the importance of adhering to the standard operating procedure because a significant, non-negligible error volume quantity of using the “second stop” of the plunger to withdraw a fluid may be illustrated to the laboratory personnel. Secondly, if a laboratory worker does make a mistake by withdrawing a fluid with the “second stop,” the error percentage of an experiment can be estimated and documented.

A buffer is a solution that resists pH change when an acid or base is added to the solution due to chemical reagent reactions in the solution or is added from outside the solution. Due to the sensitivity of biological reactions to pH levels, a buffer is commonly used in living organisms and molecular biology laboratories to create an aqueous solution suitable for biological reactions or to suspend a molecule with a stable pH level. Laboratory buffers are most commonly prepared by mixing a strong base with a weak acid or mixing a strong acid with a weak base. In a Tris buffer preparation, Tris is titrated with strong acid HCl to near the half-equivalence titration point, where HCL concentration is near half the concentration of the weak base. The half-equivalence titration point affords the buffering capacity according to the following equation.

WeakBase+ H++Cl-WeakBaseH++Cl-

Near the half-equivalence point, the weak base, such as Tris, absorbs most added H+ ions so the pH level doesn’t decrease. This absorption applies to the HCL added during and after the preparation phase. On the other hand, if a strong base is added to the buffer solution after the preparation phase at the half-equivalence point, the conjugate acid salt of the base absorbs the strong base, as shown in the following equation, absorbing the added OH- ions so the pH level doesn’t rise. 

WeakBaseH++Cl-+Na++OH-WeakBase + H2O+Cl-+Na+

The theoretical pH value of a buffer solution at the half-equivalence titration point is, by definition, the pKa value of the weak acid in a weak acid-strong base titration because a strong acid has 100% ionization by definition, and 50% of the base is ionized to combine with H+ from the strong acid. For a weak base-strong acid titration, such as a Tris buffer, the pOH value at the half-equivalence titration point is the pKb value of the weak base. The pH value can be obtained by the equation, pH=14-pOH.

Material And Methods

With water as the test fluid, a P200 micropipette was used to draw 100 μL of the liquid and then place the liquid on a weight boat. Transferring 100 μL water was performed 3 times with the technique of withdrawing fluid with the plunger at the “first stop” and another 3 times with the technique of withdrawing fluid with the plunger at the “second stop.” The weight gains of the weight boat were recorded for each of the 3 transfers with the “first stop” technique and 3 transfers with the “second stop” technique. In all 6 trials, the fluid was expelled to the weight boat  by pressing the plunger to the second stop.

With a P20 micropipette, the same water liquid transfer exercise was performed to transfer 10 μL of water 3 times with the “first stop” technique and 3 times with the “second stop” technique. Each transfer’s weight gain of the weight boat was also recorded for another 6 trials, totaling 12 trials with water as test fluid.

Furthermore, the experiment used 50% glycerol as the test fluid to perform the same procedure as water as the test fluid with the same set of P200 and P20 micropipettes. 12 trials with glycerol as the test fluid. Overall, 24 trials of fluid pipetting and weighing were performed.

The recorded pipetting weight percent difference from the expected weight for each trial was calculated using the following formula,

% difference = experiment weight - expected weight / expected weight100%

100 mM concentration Tris solution was prepared at pH 7.9; 500 mM of KCl solution was prepared; 25 g/L concentration of Lysogeny Broth was prepared at pH 7.5

Results

The P200 pipettor test results were recorded in the first half of Table 1 below. The weights of 100 μL of water ranged from 0.0995 grams to 0.1002 grams with the fluid withdrawal technique stopping the plunger at the first stop when withdrawing, with an average 0.267% difference between expected and experiment weight; the weighs of 100 μL of water ranged from 0.1432 grams to 0.2899 grams with the “second stop” fluid withdrawal technique, with an average 93.3% difference between expected and experiment weight. In the second half of the table with the P20 pipettor, the weights of 10 μL of water ranged from 0.0096 grams to 0.0099 grams with the “first stop” fluid withdrawal technique, with an average 2.0% difference between expected and experiment weight; the weighs of 10 μL of water ranged from 0.0142 grams to 0.0148 grams with the “second stop” fluid withdrawal technique, with an average 44.33% difference between expected and experiment weight.

Table 1. Result data

Pipetman/ Solution	Volume (μL)	Plunger position	Expected weight (g)	Experiment weight (g)	% difference	Average % difference	Standard deviation (%)
P200/ Water	100	1st Stop	0.1000	0.1002	0.200	0.267	0.208
				0.1001	0.100
				0.0995	0.500
		2nd Stop	0.1000	0.1432	43.20	93.30	83.68
				0.1468	46.80
				0.2899	189.9
P200/ Glycerol	100	1st Stop	0.1130	0.1162	2.832	3.009	0.177
				0.1164	3.009
				0.1166	3.186
		2nd Stop	0.1130	0.1628	44.07	97.70	87.50
				0.1699	50.35
				0.3375	198.7
P20/ Water	10	1st Stop	0.0100	0.0099	1.000	2.000	1.732
				0.0096	4.000
				0.0099	1.000
		2nd Stop	0.0100	0.0142	42.00	44.33	3.215
				0.0143	43.00
				0.0148	48.00
P20/ Glycerol	10	1st Stop	0.0113	0.0111	1.770	0.885	0.885
				0.0113	0.000
				0.0112	0.885
		2nd Stop	0.0113	0.0274	142.5	79.06	54.97
				0.0169	49.56
				0.0164	45.13

Legend: The first column is the micropipette and test fluid used. The Volume column is the micropipette settings during the experiment. For each volume setting for a given test fluid, 3 trials were performed, as recorded in the 3 split rows of the Experiment Weight column. The percent difference is calculated based on the expected weight of water given the density of 1.0 g/mL and the weight of 50% glycerol given the density of 1.13 g/mL from Umassonline.net by Dr. E. Zagriadskaia [1]. 

Also shown in Table 1, with 50% glycerol, the weights of 100 μL of glycerol ranged from 0.1162 grams to 0.1166 grams with the fluid withdrawal technique stopping the plunger at the first stop when withdrawing, with an average 3.00% difference between expected and experiment weight; the weights of 100 μL of glycerol ranged from 0.1628 grams to 0.3375 grams with the “second stop” fluid withdrawal technique, with an average 97.7% difference between expected and experiment weight. The weights of 10 μL of glycerol ranged from 0.0111 grams to 0.0113 grams with the “first stop” fluid withdrawal technique, with an average 0.885% difference between expected and experiment weight; the weights of 10 μL of glycerol ranged from 0.0164 grams to 0.0274 grams with the “second stop” fluid withdrawal technique, with an average 79.1% difference between expected and experiment weight.

In Figure 1 below, with the P200 pipette dispensing 100 μL of fluid, the average percentage error of pipetting weights with the first stop when withdrawing fluids was compared side-by-side with the average percentage error of pipetting weights with the second stop when withdrawing fluid. For the P20 pipette dispensing 10 μL of fluid, in Figure 2 below, the average percentage error of pipetting weights with the first stop when withdrawing fluids was compared with the second stop when withdrawing fluid. 

Figure 1. P200 pipetting weight difference between expected and experiment result Legend: The “first stop” and “second stop” pipetting technique results are shown side-by-side for a given test fluid of either water or glycerol. The volume dispense setting is 100 μL in all cases. The “second stop” practice has a much higher % error for both test fluids.

Figure 2. P20 pipetting weight difference between expected and experiment result Legend: The “first stop” and “second stop” pipetting technique results are shown side-by-side for a given test fluid of either water or glycerol. The volume dispense setting is 10 μL in all cases. The “second stop” practice has a much higher % error for both test fluids.

Discussion

As shown in Figure 1 above with the P200 pipette, the average pipette fluid weight error was much smaller, between 0.267% and 3%, when using the “first stop” technique when withdrawing a fluid. This was true for both water and glycerol test subjects. The large percentage error when pipetting with the “second stop” during withdrawal, between 93% and 97%, was likely due to the larger extra volume of the second stop afforded to dispense extra air to expel any fluid stuck on the wall of the pipette tip. This meant that the second stop should not be used when withdrawing a fluid using a micropipette, and the proper technique was to press the plunger at the first stop and then withdraw a fluid. Also, as shown in Figure 2 with the P20, the first-stop technique yielded a much smaller error of pipetted fluid weights, between 0.9% and 2%; the second-stop technique yielded a much larger error of pipetted fluid weights, between 44% and 79%. All the evidence in both figures pointed to the first stop as the proper technique for withdrawing a fluid with a micropipette in a molecular biology laboratory. The accuracy when using the proper technique in dispensing fluids was much higher when stopping the plunger at the first stop when withdrawing a fluid.

Looking at the error percentages of pipetting weights by P200 and P20 pipette units with the first stop technique, the percentage errors were all quite small, at 0.267% and 2%, respectively, for the water test fluid. However, the absolute error with the P20 pipette was smaller when factoring in pipetting volumes according to the following calculations, 

P200: weight error=percent/100 weight =0.267%/1000.1g=0.000267g

P20:   weight error=percent/100 weight =2.00%/1000.01g=0.000200g

. This meant that the P20 pipette had higher accuracy in dispensing a small volume. This difference implied that the smaller unit pipette should be chosen to perform a fluid transfer whenever possible. The larger unit pipette should only be used when a smaller pipette couldn't hold the needed volume quantity. For example, dispensing 15 μL of a fluid should be performed with P20, not P200; dispensing 150 μL of a fluid should be performed with P200, not P2000. 

Conclusion

The proper use technique of micropipettes improves volume dispensing accuracy, as hypothesized at the beginning of this study. Specifically, the technique of stopping the plunger at the first stop during fluid withdrawal significantly reduces errors in dispensing volumes, as shown in the discussion. Furthermore, when choices among different micropipettes to dispense a fluid are available, the smallest possible micropipette that can hold the volume should be used instead of an overly large micropipette because the smaller pipette generally has higher accuracy and precision. Higher accuracy and precision improve an experiment’s contribution.

References

[1] Zagriadskaia, E. (2024). BIOCHEMISTRY TECHNIQUES  BIOL 4210L/5210L Spring 2024. Umassonline.net. https://lowell.umassonline.net/bbcswebdav/pid-2666023-dt-content-rid-28390199_1/xid-28390199_1