The Test Tube
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THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE SCIENCE THE BIOMEDICAL 28 SCIENTIST Lab equipment Lab equipment SCIENTIST 29 THE TEST TUBE: A SYMBOLIC “The test tube has this metaphorical meaning that has gone far beyond its STORY physical form” While the test he test tube is possibly the speaking, varies from 10 to 20mm wide, 50 most unobtrusive piece of to 200mm in diameter, and 100 to 150mm tube is hardly the equipment in the lab: its long. We could talk about test tube racks most imposing workaday function and sheer and brushes, but they’re not about to set ubiquity render it more or less the imagination on fire, are they? item of glassware invisible. Scratch beneath the Yet despite this lack of any real defining on a scientist’s surface, though, and you’ll character or compelling backstory, if one find… well, not a whole lot. piece of lab equipment has come to workbench, its It has little in the way of an arresting symbolise chemistry, and in some ways Torigin story – indeed, the inception of the the whole of modern science, it is the test symbolic power test tube is as opaque and colourless as tube. How on earth did that happened? is second to none. many of the solutions it holds. The materials that go into manufacturing test Historic origin tubes are generally unexceptional (mostly Of all the many basic shapes and plastic or glass, though Pyrex is mildly sizes of equipment that populate the diverting), and otherwise there is little to average chemistry lab, the test tube differentiate one test tube from another, appears to be a relatively new addition: apart from the size, which, roughly no mention of it, or anything like it, THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE SCIENCE THE BIOMEDICAL 30 SCIENTIST Lab equipment Lab equipment SCIENTIST 31 appears before the 19th century. wrote in 1814 – though this was more normally reach for when they needed to of the global glass manufacturing borosilicate glass is undoubtedly Pyrex, One version has it that the test tube likely the genesis of the tall form beaker store or mix small amounts of liquids. In an corporation Schott AG) created which was developed by Eugene Sullivan sprang from the imagination of the that carries Berzelius’ name to this day. article for Chemistry World, the science writer borosilicate glass for the first time in 1893. in the US in 1908 after he had Swede Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848). Another version contends that the test Philip Ball also points out that Faraday’s Borosilicate glass is made with boric It’s one of the encountered borosilicate glass as a Considered one of the fathers of modern tube was the brainchild of Michael Faraday letters were littered with descriptions and oxide, silica sand and soda ash, and has the student in Germany. In one form or chemistry, Berzelius has more than (1791-1867). He is, of course, famous for his drawings of test tubes: “He sketches one, vital property of a low thermal expansion fundamental, another, Pyrex soon found its way into enough achievements to his name, not pioneering work in chemistry and for example, in a letter to the German- coefficient – in other words, it can countless labs and kitchens, where its least discovering silicon, selenium and electromagnetism, and for inventing an Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich withstand very high temperatures without iconic bits fracture-proof powers have prevented thorium, devising the chemical notation early version of what was to become the Schönbein in 1854.” stressing its shape, area or volume. This many a scorching casserole dish from system, and establishing the Bunsen burner, plus the Faraday Perhaps Faraday picked up on Berzelius’ meant that test tubes could be applied of equipment shattering upon impact with cold water. differences between organic and cage, which blocks electromagnetic idea, scaled it down so that it would fulfill directly to a heat source, such as a Bunsen that nobody Even today, most of the glassware to be inorganic compounds. In light fields. He first mentions the idea a specific practical purpose, and in that burner, which would raise the temperature found within the reach of a chemist of that, conceiving the of the test tube in his 1827 way made it his own? We’ll likely never of the liquid or solid inside but leave the escapes using – including test tubes, flasks, jugs, test tube could have book Chemical know, but whatever the truth it’s fairly tube itself intact and unchanged. bottles and beakers – will have been something Manipulation, certain that Faraday, Berzelius or anybody While the actual heat resistance will been manufactured from he tossed off in an suggesting that else who might have “invented” the test vary depending on the properties of the borosilicate glass under one brand idle moment one small glass tubes tube could not possibly have imagined the specific type of borosilicate glass, it can name or another. rainy afternoon. would be useful for extent to which this simple container has typically withstand temperatures of up to According to the testing reactions. since populated labs all over the world. several hundred degrees celsius. It’s also Symbolic power evidence he They would be a resistant to chemicals and has excellent Never mind the history or physical described purpose-built Heat resistance optical clarity, so it quickly became the properties of the test tube, what truly something very replacement for the Arguably, the key moment for the test ideal material for the test tube and other matters is that it has come to signify similar to what we wine glasses that tube was not actually its inception but pieces of glassware. something much bigger. As Andrea know as the test Faraday and other rather when the German chemist and Schott called his glass Duran, but the Sella, Professor of Chemistry at tube in an article he chemists would glass expert Otto Schott (the founder IMAGES: GETTY/ISTOCK/ALAMY most well-known trade name for University College London, says: “The THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE 32 SCIENTIST Lab equipment test tube has this metaphorical meaning tube really lent itself to that sort of work. that has gone far beyond its physical From that point on, we find that the term form. It is the incubator of ideas, the ‘test tube’ slips into common parlance”. thing to which you turn to carry out experiments. It is extraordinary how that Future role resonance has built up, and I think that Today, the idea of the test tube as a symbol comes from the fact that most people for science is possibly best encapsulated by encounter test tubes in school. It’s one the term “test-tube baby”. Since the birth of the fundamental, iconic bits of in 1978 of Louis Brown, the world’s first equipment that nobody escapes using.” baby conceived using in vitro fertilisation This is a telling point. Children (IVF), this has become the universal term encounter the test tube early on in their for any and all children who have been school careers, usually long before they born as a result of IVF. Anybody with a have the chance to lose interest in IN POPULAR CULTURE passing knowledge of the process will science, and at some point will have The test tube is possibly the only piece of know that the IVF is more likely to happen picked up a test tube, perhaps poured lab equipment with a punk band named in a petri dish than an actual test tube, but after it – Peter and the Test Tube Babies. something inside it, held it over the flame “pertri-dish baby” has neither the They formed in 1978, the same year the of a Bunsen burner, and observed what original test-tube baby Louise Brown was alliterative ring or the simple symbolic happened. And even if they never handle born, and are still playing today. power of “test-tube baby” – while the another piece of lab equipment, they will Gothic literature is littered with test tubes average citizen might struggle to point out always have that experience of using a and their sinister contents secreted in dark, a petri dish in a glassware line-up, they’d labs – think Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and test tube. For Andrea this “summarises have no such trouble with the test tube. Mr Hyde. But the best example is probably the idea of ‘doing science’. And it is part of HP Lovecraft, whose stories ooze horror. For the same reason, most chemical and what has made the test tube a universal Take 1922’s Herbert West–Reanimator, corrosive substance warnings depict a symbol for science”. where the narrator finds himself “pouring liquid dripping on to a hand from a test He also argues that the test tube something from one test tube to another… tube and not from another piece of lab when from the pitch-black room we had left established its strong presence in the lab equipment. Confronted with such a there burst the most appalling and towards the end of the 19th century, daemoniac succession of cries that either of warning, nobody needs to dwell a moment when chemical analysis became a big us had ever heard”. This story was the longer on deciphering its meaning. business: “This is one of the reasons why basis for gory 1985 movie Re-animator, But despite its prominent position in so many chemists were trained up in which featured more flasks, beakers and the public imagination, could the age of test tubes than you could shake an serried ranks, and the point when the the test tube be coming to an end? oversized syringe at.