Hi there, I'm Jamie Dyer. This is a Micropipet. It's the most important tool in the molecular biology lab. I randomly picked this issue of the scientific journal Nature, and all of these articles did at least some part of their research using Micropipets. A Micropipet transfers tiny volumes of liquid. It does this by drawing up the liquid like this. Of course in lab we don't transfer liquids using straws. We use pipettes. Pipettes transfer milliliters of water while Micropipets transfer micro-liters of water. Micropipets come in a few different sizes for the same reason we use different scales to weigh different types of animals. A laboratory scale is sensitive enough to weigh a mouse, but not an elephant. Similarly, this Micropipet is sensitive enough to pipette 5.5 microliters, but it doesn't have the capacity to pipette 500 microliters. These are the most common ranges for Micropipets, though there are other ones as well. We name them according to their range's upper limit. This is a P20, a P200, and a P1000. If I need to transfer 800 microliters, I'll use a P1000, but if I need to transfer 30 microliters, I'll use a P200. You can tell what the range of a Micropipet is because it's written on it somewhere, usually on the plunder, but not always. When you use a pipette, you make sure to draw up the right volume of liquid by looking at where the liquid is on the pipette. But Micropipets transfer such a tiny volume that you can't be accurate just by looking. So for Micropipets, you set the volume, and the Micropipet will draw up exactly that much. To set the volume on a Micropipet, you turn this dial here, and these numbers show you the volume that it's set to. The unit is always microliters, so this P1000 is set to 650 microliters, and this P200 is set to 85 microliters. But be careful, because for Micropipets with a range of 20 microliters or less, the volume display includes an extra number. It's usually red, which represents decimals. This is 12.5 microliters, not 125 microliters. Never sets the volume above or below a Micropipets range. It will break it, and these things are expensive. If I didn't have a straw, I could transfer the liquid like this. But now this is contaminated with my spit. The opening of a Micropipet is a little bit like a mouth, and it's usually pretty dirty, and it's not designed to hold liquid anyway. Never put a Micropipet directly into liquid. Just like I used a straw, the Micropipet needs something clean to hold the liquid. That's where this comes in. It's called a tip. The tip is clean, and it holds all the liquid. Different Micropipets need different sized tips. There are a couple of ways to tell which tips sit on which Micropipets. Sometimes the tip box says what size tips therefore, but not always. Often the color of the plunger is the same as the color of the tip, but not always. You'll know if you have the right size tip, because if it's not the right size, it won't fit. You use the plunger to draw up and dispense the liquid, but wait, there's a trick to it. When you first push down the plunger, it goes all the way to the first stop. But if you push harder, you can push it down to the second stop. The second stop is there, because when you dispense the liquid, if you only push down to the first stop, a tiny bit of liquid stays in the tip. Pushing down to the second stop squirts the rest of the liquid up, so you are sure that you transfer all the liquid in the tip. The second stop is used only for dispensing liquid, which means... Never use the second stop to draw up liquid. To draw up liquid, push the plunger to the first stop, insert the tip into the liquid, then slowly release the plunger. To dispense the liquid, push the plunger to the second stop. Now, in order to draw up liquid, you have to push the plunger down first. But if you do that when the tip is in the liquid, you'll blow bubbles. So, always push the plunger before putting the tip in the liquid. When you're drawing up or dispensing the liquid, if you push the plunger button too hard, you can squirt your liquid all over the place. So, push the plunger button slowly. Once you've transferred the liquid, your tip is dirty. If you use this tip to transfer a second liquid, you'll contaminate the second liquid. To get rid of the tip, use the ejection button, which lets you easily eject the tip. Make sure you eject it into an appropriate container. That's it! Now you're ready to use a microwave. And maybe one day you'll be the one publishing cool research in a journal like Nature.