The experiments with galvanotactic E-coli have progressed. I initially tried running the voltage through the bacteria in an electrophoresis gel holder but it became apparent that I would need to watch under a microscope to see whether or not it was working. For this I had to construct a special device that allowed me to [...]

Yes thats right we have finally managed to get the bone to vibrate. When we weren’t getting any results we went back to look at the original paper on bone piezoelectricity. We discovered that we had misinterpreted what was meant by a 45 degree angle cut. Now that the bone sections are cut at the [...]

While the rats tail collagen extraction worked, the gel is not setting as I had expected. I have tried both the ammonia and the dialysis bag method and both produce only a slightly runny gel from which the water seems to evaporate over time. Below is a picture of some of the gel created using [...]

As my last collagen extraction seems not to have worked I decided to do it all again from scratch. This time I used two rat tails scavenged from a rat used for dissection in the School. I cut the skin off the tail and underneath you can see white strips running down alonside the bone. [...]

As we were not having any luck using the vibration sensors with the bones due to electromagnetic interference Will has built a laser interferometer which should be able to detect vibration without this problem. Basically it compares a reference laser beam to a beam reflected from the specimen. Vibration causes the two beams to interfere [...]