 Well, when we talk about measurements in our curriculum here, the very first class we take that is a basic laboratory experience class, we immediately tell our students that the most important thing they're going to learn how to do is to make measurements because we're using the measurements to make reagents. So we talk about measurements like volumetric and mass and how important it is to be able to do accurate measurements so that the reagents they make are of the highest quality. They are the best they can do. No matter how crazy good your lab skills are, if you start out with a bad reagent, your results will always be bad. So the most important thing is get the reagent right first and then everything else will fall into place. Well, in the healthcare world, measurements is literally a life and death type of experience and we take care of folks from even before they're born, the pregnant woman all the way through the end of life care and all through that measurements are something that all healthcare professionals are going to have to be aware of and not just aware of but be very able to do very precise calculations because it has to do with giving medications, it has to do with giving treatments, it has to do with giving oxygen therapy, it has to do with just some basic things like height and weight, blood pressure measurements, things that we're all familiar with if we've ever been to a healthcare provider's office before. But the world of measurement is just a universe we live in and breathe in every day in health technologies. That's important for anyone to learn about measurement that if you think about just in daily life, you go to the gas station and you're buying in the price, you're giving a price per gallon, you go to the grocery store, you're looking at nutritional information and they tell you the number of servings and the, for instance, sodium content per serving or the fat per serving and so any of this deals with measurements. Now specifically for science students that science is very quantitative, that you're dealing with numbers throughout the entire duration of whatever you're doing in science and it's part of the communication that if in terms of measurements not only is the value important and the unit's important but how you actually got those values, what tools did you use and so on, it makes for easier communication if we have this sort of universal base language that we can all rely on. Well in our department, the biotechnology department, our students are trying to train many of them to get jobs right out of the two year program and so a lot of the things they might be expected to do in a laboratory deals with measurements. So knowing how to use the balances, knowing how to measure volume, knowing how to do significant figures and understanding the quality of your measurements all goes into that. Well basically it comes down to not having to repeat experiments often. If you're in a situation where it's a medical situation it could also be something that the health of somebody could depend on so it all depends on what kind of work you're doing. Well I think it's important to remember when you think about health care, you think about oxygen therapy every time you see something on TV and somebody's really sick, how do they mimic it? They mimic it by putting a little nasal cannula on their nose and oh my gosh the patient's really sick. It's commonplace now. When you go into the hospital everybody receives oxygen but what people don't remember is that oxygen is a drug and like any other drug it does have side effects and so particularly not only with adults, particularly with babies which is my specialty, there can be dramatic side effects from too much or too little oxygen. So obviously if there's too little oxygen we'll give them oxygen. We also don't want to give them too much oxygen. Various types of lung disease, problems all throughout the body can be affected by too much oxygen. If documented this is a tried and true thing over time it's well documented. Well routinely we will do volumetric measurements, we do mass measurements but we also are doing a lot of things where we're reading and analyzing using machines and so we are doing a lot of measurements with very very small volumes. We're working with our DNAs, working with our initial protein concentrations, we're looking into microliters and micrograms and so we have to learn how to use the metric system way down at some of the lowest values. Well routinely in the healthcare field we deal a lot with medications and when you deal with medications you're usually dealing with some sort of syringe and knowing how to calibrate and draw up accurately medications in a syringe. Also it'll be fluids, the different types of fluids we have come in liter bags or this one is the 250 milliliters or a fourth of a liter bag and so but there's also weight and height particularly when we're weighing our premature newborns that's all done in gram weight not in pounds and ounces like a newborn comes into the world and it's eight pounds twelve ounces with our little premature babies we have to measure them because they're so small in gram weight and so it's just across the board you know it's every way that you can do a measurement on a human system or a human chemistry level even deciliters and millimeters those sort of things go into calculation of when we're looking at blood studies and that sort of thing so it's across the board of how we use these kind of conversions. Well the big three that most labs will do commonly are temperature measurements, mass or weight and also volume. Commonly solids are weighed and liquids are dispensed according to volume so those are the three then then there's a wide range of other measurements that are done depending on the situation but those three are the big ones. Usually pH weights and volume especially small volume that's what we basically concentrate on in our labs. Well universally well of course universally means globally that is the system that is most commonly used it's the one that is most consistent it's easiest to use when you talk about the logic that goes into how units are determined as compared to the English system so we know that in our world we're going to be dealing with other scientists and they're going to be using the same system we are. Convert between the metric system all the time good examples are and these are ones that I really work with on students in the basic lab techniques class is converting between milliliter and microliter when when a paper or some protocol tells you you need to add 0.5 mils and you're using a micro pi petter it's just it's just something that you need to be able to do is to be able to say how many micro laters that is same with weight if you're supposed to add 250 milligrams and your scale is measuring in grams then you need to know how to convert those numbers back and forth so that you can actually use the equipment better. One of the advantages of the metric system is that it's based on a factor of 10 so the units often have prefixes that are a power of 10 or multiple powers of 10 and it's very easy to go from say a small unit to a larger unit by just multiplying by the right number of factors of 10 but very frequently we need to use a larger number or smaller number and then we have to do conversions very frequently they're important because if you convert in the wrong direction you may be saying or reporting something is bigger than it really is or smaller than it really is so being able to do a conversion accurately is an important skill. I was thinking of some of the mistakes that have been dealt that have happened because of measurement there's it's usually with conversion it's not the measurement technique itself but the conversion technique that there's the famous incident of the probe being sent to Mars where they had the thrust was that was calculated that needed to be figured out was done based upon one system of units and the computer was based upon a different system of units there is famous incident with Canadian aircraft the Gimli glider that where they had just officially converted from one system of units to another they calculated how much fuel they needed in one system of units and filled up based upon that but didn't have enough jet fuel in order to make it halfway to their destination unfortunately no one was hurt that eventually the pilots are able to glide it down it's part of that common language of just because you see a number doesn't automatically immediately mean what you think it means and so the proper technique does two things one it will make it very clear what units were used but also it makes the measurements that you're talking about that much more accurate that that if you know how to use for instance a vernier caliper then later if you're talking about a user vernier caliper and it came out to be five meters long well that right there is indicating you don't know what you're talking about because at least I've never seen a one that goes that far for that large of a measurement so but if you're using a vernier caliper then everyone else if you're using it properly everyone else knows okay I've used it before I know how it's what he's done I know the accuracy of that and again it's again part of the communication of the ideas in science especially physics which is more my field that the precision and accuracy of language is very particular and it is just part of the common language that is basically understood all over the world the consequences are that it goes right back to what we started out with and that is the reagents aren't going to be any good they're not going to be able to meet the needs that you have set forth for your experimental system yeah that's it well I I mean I don't think I can overstate this enough it truly can be life and death it truly can be I mean in the way I've given medications particularly when you talk about the most of honorables like our children children dosage you know because it's so much predicated on their weight you're going to give an X amount of medication based on their weight if my if my order is three-tenths of a milliliter and I don't see the decimal there and I go give three milliliters then I then possibly that could have devastating effects given that kind of incorrect dosage so it is it is absolutely critical to be precise to know how to do these accurate conversions because truly it it is it is it can be life and death