So here I am at the midpoint of this experiment. Already the sample that was sealed with parafilm is completely evaporated. The sample with the o-ring is nearly empty. Meanwhile, the sample with no seal is doing really well. I’m guessing the parafilm somehow ruined the seal of the analyslide but in the case of the o-ring sample I’m thinking I didn’t seal that as well as I could have.

With that said, the rubber band is holding up particularly well. Obviously the greases (both vacuums and the vaseline) should seal well, and the glue gun as well. I will set up an experiment with a number of rubber band samples and see if they seal well over the next 8 days or so (once this experiment is complete). If they all do about the same then I will try to repeat the Crumley experiment with rubber bands as the seals. If not then I will just stick with vaseline or the DOW Corning vacuum grease.

Also it should be noted that I’m experiencing some issues with the slideshows I setup to track each sample change. On my home laptop (Macbook Pro, using Chrome) I don’t notice an issue, but here in the lab (Windows XP, using Firefox) not all the slideshows load completely (for me). And it is always the same slideshows that have the issue. If anyone else experiences this problem please let me know. Also of note, WordPress itself isn’t functioning properly so I’m guessing it is a Firefox issue and only on this computer.