I can’t remember if I posted this yesterday or not (and I’m too lazy to look it up myself) but yesterday when I got into lab, the -80C freezer malfunctioned and there was an alarm alerting me to a “high system failure.” After calling VWR and receiving next to no help, I unplugged the machine and plugged it back it after waiting a few minutes. Problem solved. The freezer is working like normal again.
I have no idea what caused the malfunction, but everything in the freezer was thawed. Koch and I filled some styrofoam containers with LN2 (liquid nitrogen) and put everything in the freezer into the LN2. We then stuck the containers in the freezer to add an extra layer of insulation. I’ll remove the samples tomorrow and place them back in their respective boxes and back in the freezer like normal.