Week 4: A Watched Cuvette Never Turns Blue

Like last week, this week was a blur. Monday lab meeting was productive; right away I knew it’d be bustling week. It started with freezing mixed probe (indigo disulfonate) and iron oxide (lepidocrocite) solutions. Freezing the samples at different rates may impact their redox conditions upon thawing. I continued absorbance tests on Monday as well.

On Tuesday, I left lepidocrocite behind and began work with a new iron oxide, geothite. Though this was week four of my internship, fine-tuning (or should I say coarse-tuning?) of my laboratory procedures continued at a more fervent rate than ever. Test tubes broke, pH probes mocked me with baffling readings, and cuvettes – even after being perplexedly stared at by confused scientists – refused to turn blue like they should have. Every issue seemed to get resolved a day later, so today’s perplexities will have to wait until Monday.

By late afternoon Thursday, most of the experimental kinks were worked out, and new protocols were in place. We’re waiting for a new pH probe to come in next week. I continued testing with geothite and indigo disulfonate today (Friday), cleaned the glovebox, and wrapped up the week by learning how to use the glass chromatography machine.  

Midterm presentations are next week! I'm expecting another busy week, hopefully with some promising results.