This week was exhausting terrifying stimulating SCIENCE!
I am working with a lovely post doc (Fabienne) in the engineering school and she is showing me how to use the Zetasizer DLS (Dynamic Light Scattering) – which will be used in my project later on.
Just like the familiar adage, ‘the early bird doesn’t catch heat stroke;’ we had to get up with the sun to sample at the CEINT mesocosms. So this week involved a lot of DLS, a lot of early mornings and a lot of explanations by Fabienne (the DLS uses the Stokes-Einstein equation . . . ). But I think I get it now.
I also had to do a lot of preliminary work. I had to contact people at local wastewater treatment plants to ask/beg if we could sample at their facilities (only one positive response so far). I also had to get and prepare my supplies. I had to make this nifty net (to the left).
On Friday I got to visit my first wastewater treatment plant. I don’t think many people realize how incredibly complicated the process is . . . and it is honestly not as gross as you might think. I collected water, duckweed, algae and spiders. I collected the itty bitty spiders while my more, um, adventurous cohort caught the huge ones. Like this monster below.
And then I hate to identify these terrors (it’s a Bold Jumper just fyi). Then I had to filter and label and preserve my samples. And by preserve I mean flash freeze in liquid nitrogen! I like living on the edge (liquid nitrogen, spiders, lasers, science, etc.). Overall, it was an exciting and exhausting week – which is just what I signed up for.
I am really starting to work on my actual project. To put it simply, I am looking at the fate of nanoparticles in an ecosystem. The ecosystem I am focusing on is manmade (wastewater treatment plant) but does have the potential to already have engineered nanoparticles. The Bernhardt Lab is interested in (many things including) the biogeochemistry of nutrients, energy, and most recently, nanoparticles.
