Paper discs?

[ffutures]

Something I regularly need is absorbent paper discs for bacteriology experiments. We usually make them by punching holes in filter paper, but most hole punches are 6mm, we could really do with something a little bigger, e.g. 10mm.

Looking on eBay, all of the paper punches on offer seem to be complicated shapes or 15mm or bigger circles, which is too big for our needs. Anyone know of a source for 10mm punch? Preferably not the ones you hit with a hammer though, they usually damage the discs.

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit agoggle. Our Health & Safety people have banned experiments with live bacteria. Likewise dissections of animal bit bought from a butcher (although the food classes right next door are happily cutting them up with kitchen knives and no goggles).

Sometimes I think that our Board only hires inspectors who think science=danger.


I'll keep my eyes open at the local craft shops. I saw punches like that at Michaels last year, but they only have them intermittently. What's your budget?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Low - a few quid.

How do your health and safety people expect you to teach biology with those restrictions?

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can find you one this weekend.

Our H&S people really don't care if we teach or not. It's not their problem. "Use computer simulations" gets tossed around a fair bit, even though there's no evidence the skills learned there transfer to a real lab, and no money for computers anyway.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Don't start posting things from Canada - it's horribly expensive and things go missing; wasn't it you that sent me a microscope adapter that never reached me?

I'm still boggled by your blanket ban - today in our sixth form centre we had three class dissections; hearts, eyes, and flowers - and I prepared a bacterial culture for a class experiment on Friday, which is what put the paper disk thing in mind. Tomorrow someone's doing more eyes (and also wanted to dissect a squid but they're out of season) and someone in our other building is doing an investigation with live pond organisms, next week more hearts and kidneys, and so forth.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

It was a MacBook battery. It's OK, as the Post Office paid me for it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh right - no, I never got that. But you see my point.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I can't off-hand remember where you're located. If you're in the USA I can't make any suggestion, I don't know much about the health and safety scene there, but if it's the UK there's a very good pamphlet which covers the legal and safety side of most allegedly banned experiments.

http://cleapss.org.uk/attachments/article/0/PS69.pdf?Free%20Publications/

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Canada. Many of our H&S inspectors are former caretakers (cleaners) who've taken a short course…

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Good grief.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

At one of the schools I've taught at the inspector insisted we throw away all the salt compounds in chemistry, because they had no expiry date on the bottles. Our head, who was an environmental engineer, tried to explain that sodium chloride deposits are millions of years old and don't go bad, but as she wasn't an inspector he ignored her. There was no money to replace the chemicals, so we stopped doing a bunch of labs.

Then there was the mandatory training session where a middle school principal asked what to do with a particular type of ventilation malfunction, and the trainer told her not to worry, just report it to her principal who would know what to do and fix it for her. Repeatedly. He apparently couldn't understand that she was the principal. Whether this was general incompetence or sexism (masculine pronoun used for authority figures, feminine for teachers) doesn't really matter—the result was the same. He did have hand-lettered flip-charts, though.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Ebay no. 400202727001, nine hollow punches for leather, card etc. with a 10mm size punch in the set. BIN delivered for under a fiver. They are meant to be used with a hammer but if you're only cutting filter paper then hand pressure through a few sheets might suffice, or if you have a bench press then that might work too.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll take a look.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I found someone else doing a similar set for £3.49 inc. P&P so I've bought it on spec - has to be worth a try.

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

Try a large scrapbooking store. They have punches of every size and description.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

There do seem to be huge ranges - there's something like 350 on offer on ebay - just nothing the size I want.