Many times, an experiment could also be seen as a kind of agricultural activity.
The operator composted glass fields, scattered seeds, then waited in the same way, living at the mercy of the weather.
Changes in temperature, imbalances of water and heat—tiny disturbances could reduce every effort to nothing.
And there was the most important thing, and the easiest to overlook: the efforts others had made before them.
Every ordinary seed sown by a farmer had undergone hundreds or thousands of years of natural selection and artificial domestication before becoming what it was today—plump and full, not easily shedding from its stalk.
Experimenters were not so fortunate. From learning what was needed to successfully cultivating the target strain, the time and effort required were impossible to measure.
"Fortunately, someone already paid the highest price for this part."
They had Westminster's Heterodoxy to thank. Otherwise, no one would ever have realized that just as death and decay could nourish plant growth, the annihilation of certain Deep Layer life-forms could spur mold growth at an unbelievable rate.
Kraft opened the culture dish, scraped away the vigorous fungal colony that had nearly climbed over the rim, and poured the contents into a funnel. A pale yellow transparent solution passed through a fine sieve and two layers of gauze, dripping down one drop at a time.
After emptying the entire laboratory, the filtrate had accumulated into a respectable half-jar.
Next, diluted sulfuric acid was slowly dripped in for acidification, lowering the target product's solubility in water and laying the groundwork for organic extraction.
This step was more complicated than when preparing salicylic acid. An overly acidic environment would instead damage the active ingredient.
The lack of test strips was a problem, but the purple cabbage in the soup bowl reminded him: there might not