Recently on YouTube, Easternblot, who has her own science YouTube channel, asked if I could make an informal unscripted lab tour.

(Describer) She looks around a lab.

Yeah. Let's go. Here's the lab. OK. So we have a long hallway that goes that way, and then there are benches and desks set in along the hallway. This is the first bench, and this is the refrigerator that makes so much noise. And I always have to wait for it to stop making noise so that I can film. Why are you so loud?

[REFRIGERATOR MOTOR BUZZING]

Why? Around the corner here is our tissue culture room. We have two tissue culture hoods in here. We also have a microscope and a bunch of incubators. All of our cell culture work is done in this room.

(Describer) A yellow sticky note stuck to a box says, "Why did the cell cross the microscope? To get to the other slide."

I work here in the second bay in the lab. That is where my camera is generally set up, facing this way into the lab. So we have my bench and my desk.

(Describer) Her bench is another counter, with small equipment and test tubes.

The bench is where all of the science happens, and the desk is where all the other science happens. But everything, reagents, chemicals, pipettes, everything stays over on this side. All of me, computers, things that I touch without gloves stays on this side. This little piece of plastic is apparently very important.

(Describer) A divider.

Here we have lots of storage of things from flasks to beakers, to tubes, to racks, to all kinds of stuff. Storage is great. You need a lot of stuff in a lab. My centrifuge is pretty old. My lab manager's centrifuge is pretty new. Waste containers. Biohazard, sharp biohazard, trash. Glass disposal. This is where we run our gels. I plan on making a whole video series on this. In fact, I plan on making a whole video series of a lot of the things that you're just seeing in passing in this video. So in the future, I'll annotate those. For the moment, not annotated. I now need to show you the most serious, most intriguing, most mysterious piece of equipment that we have in this lab, the microwave.

(Describer) It has a sticker that says No Food or Drinks. Lab coats hang from the backs of chairs. A fire extinguisher sits in a low cabinet. A sign saying "Emergency Shower/Eye Wash" covers a small alcove. The shower itself hangs from the ceiling above. A printer has a sign saying, "Hello, Ashley Lab! I am your printer."

Shelves where we keep our chemicals. Important cabinet where we keep our flammables. And a cabinet full of corrosive acids.

(Describer) A label says "corrosive acids".

This was a very brief run through of my lab and what a general lab space looks like, just to give you an idea of what the general setup and feel, and stuff in a lab maybe kind of looks like. So in the future, I hope that the What is This Thing videos will start to fill in with some of the things that you see around me are and will hopefully become their own sort of tour through the lab. So subscribe and stay tuned for those. If there's anything that you saw in this video today where you were like, whoa, you went right by that thing, what is that thing, leave the time point in the comments down below, and I will try and do a What is This Thing on them. Go forth and do science.

(Describer) Titles: Alex Dainis - Science Vlogger, Genetics Grad Student. Twitter At Alex Dainis. Instagram Alex dot Dainis. Her camera slowly turns to show some of the lab again, including one hall connecting rows of work areas. Accessibility provided by the US Department of Education.