Tar is Beautiful

I encountered another "first" today, namely my first tar extraction.  We ran through part of the protocol for extracting DNA from tar, and while I can't reveal the details, I can say that it was magical and awesome.  The reason why we do this is so that we can assess the biodiversity of and relationships between the microbes present in the tar.  How do these guys survive in such a hostile environment?  Do they work together?  How biologically diverse is this environment? Here are a few pictures:

 Tar (and my glorious, gloved hand) 

More tar (don't you love how the light sparkles against the black mass?)

  We dumped out leftover liquid nitrogen at the end of the day.  Most people think of Halloween and dippin' dots at the mention of liquid nitrogen, but it can be quite useful in a lab.  For one, it is used in lyophilization - the drying of materials like DNA or liquid culture (bacteria in liquid media) for later use.  What happens is the liquid nitrogen freezes the liquid in the sample, which is placed in a freeze drier and exposed to low pressure and temperatue, which causes the now frozen liquid to enter the gaseous state directly from its solid state (sublimation), migrating from the high pressure of the sample to the low pressure of the surrounding area.