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Week 2: Tests

During this second week I got the opportunity to run the tests on my own that I learned how to do last week with my mentor. It was a good reminder of the importance of keeping a detailed lab notebook, as I had to refer back to it a lot to get all the details of how to make the solutions correctly. That took two days, and after that I started making solutions of manganese ligands. I did this by first making solutions of sodium ligands, such as sodium oxalate, and then adding a solution of manganese pyrophosphate, which would then bind to the oxalate ligand. I measured the absorbance values of these solutions mixed with LBB on the plate reader, which I've gotten to use quite a bit. 
It's been really nice this week to have a better idea of how the lab works and where everything is, so I'm able to work more independently. My favorite part of the week was getting to work in the anerobic chamber to prepare solutuions for next week. The challenge was to pipette 10 microliters over and over into tiny vials while while wearing the anerobic chamber gloves, which are "one size fits all," so they are really big.