Yess... we got action potential

So finally, we had the much touted "frog lab" this week. Our anticipation was pretty much high following the "in old days" stories by our professor. (In old days, you had to come up with your own frogs... The first frog doesn't know, but by the 5th frog they are wondering, "Hey, where IS Johny???" and they know something is wrong etc. etc.)

So we all crowded around the Frog Master (sounded like Beast Master to me, but on the wrong side of line), and watched him putting a frog painlessly to death. And I could watch it; guess I could have stood med school after all (Sorry Nilesh). As each frog has 2 (rear) legs, we had a lot of frog legs to go around, and we Grad students became actual doers instead of watchers on the undergrads.

So Jason gets one frog leg, and me, Chris and Amorn try our luck with the other one. Dissecting a frog leg was not something I was thinking of doing; I am not a wannabe medical doctor after all. But still, we plowed on. At the end Jason comes up with the sciatic nerve removed surgically from the leg. His leg, sorry the one he dissected could still be cooked and served (frog leg is supposed to be a delicacy). But when we finally got the nerve out, our frog leg looked like the frog had just lost an argument with a minefield, a classic case of "too many hands spoil the dissection".

We had played around so much with the nerve, that we were not expecting to see anything when the nerve was connected. Jason gets a perfect action potential, after fiddling around the controls for maybe 10-15 min. After that, we connect the nerve we got out, and give it a stimulating pulse, and yesss...

We Got an Action Potential!!!!!

Jason: My bump is bigger that yours…
Amorn: It's not the size that matters, you know...