The Unbalanced Centrifuge
So, I watched Project Hail Mary last night. Best movie I’ve seen in ages. What a spirited, funny but also very tense ride! I loved it!
One of the funniest bits was my wife getting annoyed at the main character, who like her is a biologist, loading a centrifuge. The dude has two samples and puts them right next to each other in the centrifuge, instead of opposite each other to balance out the centrifugal forces — as any real scientist would do. It annoyed her so much that, after waking up this morning, the first thing she did — from bed, mind you — was to go on the internet to find out if she was the only person who noticed this. Of course, she wasn’t. There are quite a few annoyed biologists and chemists out there.
Yeah — the unbalanced centrifuge took me totally out of the movie. I won’t say it ruined the movie for me but the first thing I did when I got home was search for someone else grumbling about this. He had two tubes! I can understand not balancing it when you have one tube, who among us hasn’t done that? But when you have two tubes and you don’t balance them? That’s crazy.