Gas permeability of silicone oil?

[Tom Anderson]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, peter wrote:

> On Mar 30, 10:03 am, Tom Anderson <ucga... from ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > I use a silicone oil to reduce evaporation from dishes i'm looking at
> > on our inverted scope; my experiments are generally less than an hour
> > long, so gas exchange isn't a huge deal, but a colleague wants to do
> > some much longer experiments, and we're not sure if the oil i use is
> > suitable.
>
> I don't know the answer of the question you asked, but if the
> evaporation is an issue, why don't you use humid chamber for long
> experiments? I am sure that there are microscopes equipped with small
> boxes that keep CO2 and humidity controlled.

True. The microscope my colleague wants to use has a heated, CO2-gassed
chamber, but it's not humidified. He's going to put a beaker or dish of
water in there, but is still worried about evaporation. We could get a
properly humidifed chamber, but this would involve persuading our
microscope technician, ordering it, fitting it, etc, whereas a suitable
oil is an order to Sigma away!

tom

-- 
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, London WC1E 6BT
(t) +44 (20) 76797264   (f) +44 (20) 76797805   (e) thomas.anderson from ucl.ac.uk