HOW TO DO DILUTION SERIES CALCULATIONS SERIAL

HOW TO DO DILUTION SERIES CALCULATIONS SERIAL

So, how do serial dilutions work & why do we use them? You keep diluting the same thing over and over but in a constant-stepwise fashion, stepwise being key & theyРІР‚в„ўre useful for lots of things like helping with accuracy & creating РІР‚Сљstandard curvesРІР‚Сњ which are a series of things on known concentration that allow you to compare yours to (I was doing this today, hence the postРІР‚В¦) More on these whyРІР‚в„ўs after we discuss the how (and IРІР‚в„ўll probably do a follow-up post on standard curves because people might find that helpful too).Р”В«ut letРІР‚в„ўs get back to the how for now, skipping the part where you milk the cow РІР‚вЂњ say you want to do 1:2 dilutions of Cheerios, weРІР‚в„ўll call them C for shortness. And it gives us shortcuts to work with as weРІР‚в„ўll seeРІР‚В¦ When we have something changing by a constant multiplier (like 1/2 or 1/10) we call it geometric, or exponential, growth/decay. Serial dilutions are kinda like pyramid schemes with the opposite effect РІР‚вЂњ if you start out with a certain amount of money it gets distributed to more and more people РІР‚вЂњ but you canРІР‚в„ўt give out more money than you started with so people end up with less and less money. WeРІР‚в„ўd have a dilution factor of 10, so each new spoonful would have 10-times-less Cheerios than the one before. If instead of mixing 1 spoonful to 1 spoonful each time weРІР‚в„ўd mixed 1 spoonful to 9 spoonfuls of milk (a 1:10 dilution) our Cheerios would dilute out a lot faster. So in this case, where our dilution factor is 2, each new Cheerio mix has 1/2 as many Cheerios per spoonful than the one before it. So each mix has a dilution-factor times less than the one before it. 1:2 in this example) so the concentration (relative amount of the thing to the non-thing) decreases exponentially. In a serial dilution you perform a series of stepwise dilutions where youРІР‚в„ўre diluting by the same factor each time (e.g. Take a spoonful of Cheerios and add it to a spoonful of milk, stir it up well, take a spoonful of this new mix and add it to a spoonful of fresh milk, stir that up & add a spoonful of it to another spoonful of new milk andРІР‚В¦ YouРІР‚в„ўve got yourself a SERIAL cereal DILUTION!

How to do dilution series calculations