Low cost PS is, for example, BioRad cat #165-5048, PowerPac Mini Power Supply, 100 or 200 V, List Price: $252.00. Biorad and other companies often have "educational" kits that can save a lot of time and money too.
About your comment for #2: the general idea is correct. The voltage and time should be the same for all samples. In reality, other parameters should be the same too, e.g. temperature. If you run the gel "hot", often the front of the dye will not be straight, but curved with faster zone in the middle. This is due to heating up of the gel and greater heat exchange closer to the border (end) of the gel. Actually, in the case of PAGE gels, sometimes you can see DNA melting due to this.
The PAGE gel should polymerize in CO2, but why bother? Besides, regular CO2 atmosphere commonly found in tissue culture labs is actually just 5% CO2 in air. If you are going through the effort of setting up O2-free atmosphere, use nitrogen or argon. But then again, why bother?
For home use, metals other than platinum should be fine. I would imaging that silver or gold can do the trick. Expense will be much smaller, especially if one coats say copper wire with silver or gold. Silver nitrate used to be sold in pharmacies, not sure if one still can buy it.
Re: Drinking straw electrophoresis!
About your comment for #2: the general idea is correct. The voltage and time should be the same for all samples. In reality, other parameters should be the same too, e.g. temperature. If you run the gel "hot", often the front of the dye will not be straight, but curved with faster zone in the middle. This is due to heating up of the gel and greater heat exchange closer to the border (end) of the gel. Actually, in the case of PAGE gels, sometimes you can see DNA melting due to this.
The PAGE gel should polymerize in CO2, but why bother? Besides, regular CO2 atmosphere commonly found in tissue culture labs is actually just 5% CO2 in air. If you are going through the effort of setting up O2-free atmosphere, use nitrogen or argon. But then again, why bother?
For home use, metals other than platinum should be fine. I would imaging that silver or gold can do the trick. Expense will be much smaller, especially if one coats say copper wire with silver or gold. Silver nitrate used to be sold in pharmacies, not sure if one still can buy it.