Hacker CinemaNaturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist
2009 · Film · documentary · 60 min
Directed by Richard Rifkind, Carole Rifkind
Three ambitious graduate students race to uncover the biological switch that controls human appetite—while confronting the personal and emotional trials that define the path of discovery. Rob, the eternal dropout, struggles to persevere; Kilpatrick wrestles between ambition and comfort; and Gabriele questions her place in science altogether. Guiding them is Larry, a passionate young professor determined to inspire creativity and resilience in his students. Filmed over three years, The Switch captures the triumphs, failures, and self-discovery that come with life in the lab—where the hardest experiment of all is finding out who you really are.
1 positivefrom 1 commenter
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
1 comment on Hacker News
> growing crystals was of paramount importance for certain structure determinations using X-ray crystallography (to answer "did I really prepare what I think I prepared?")
Ahh, X-ray crystallography, a.k.a. the field of modern (bio)chemistry that most closely resembles medieval alchemy.
The excellent 2009 documentary "Naturally Obsessed" [0] is about how difficult, time-consuming, and frankly irrational it can be to successfully crystallize certain proteins and protein complexes. The film is about how some PhD students spend the entire five-ish years of their degree programs trying (and mostly failing) to find the secret recipes (protein purity/additive ingredients/temperature/humidity/phase of the moon) that will allow their proteins to crystallize, and thus granting them data with which to populate their dissertations.
Why irrational? In one case, the secret ingredient is pickle juice.
[0]: https://www.thirteen.org/naturally-obsessed/