There are only a handful of techniques you'll actually repeat every day in a wet lab. Get these four right and 80% of your undergraduate practicals will start going smoothly.
Pipetting. A good pipetting habit is the single highest-leverage skill in a biology lab. Pre-wet the tip, aspirate slowly, dispense against the wall, and never mouth the top plunger position. Repeatability matters more than speed.
Weighing. Zero the balance every time. Tare the vessel, not the paper. Never weigh a hygroscopic reagent with the balance door open. If your buffer keeps missing pH by 0.2, it's usually here.
Buffer preparation. Learn to work from first principles: moles, molar mass, target volume. A phosphate buffer at pH 7.4 is not the same recipe as one at 6.8, and the difference will absolutely show up in your enzyme assay.
Dilutions. C1V1 = C2V2 is not optional. Serial dilutions compound errors — practise them with coloured dye before you burn expensive reagent.
None of these techniques are hard. All of them reward practice.
— The SciMantra Team
