Week Five

I spent this week at the OSU campus, working with Zanna Chase. There, Zanna showed me how to measure zinc concentrations using fluorescence. At first, we had some trouble using the fluorometer; it was giving us inconsistent numbers and varied significantly depending on how much sample we ran through the machine. Eventually, we decided that it wasn't working to put the sample through the machine using a syringe, so we switched to using a peristaltic pump to get a continuous flow. That seemed to work a lot better. So, we used the week to prepare the standards, figure out how to run the machine correctly, and we also tested the effect of salinity on our measurements. Then, on Wednesday evening, I went to a barbeque at Zanna's house and met a lot of people from OSU, which was really nice, and delicious! On Friday, I went to meet with Cale Wetzel at WET Labs. He gave me a tour of the whole building and told me all about the in situ phosphate analyzer they were developing. It was very cool to see the instrument as well as to see how the science behind the instrument eventually led to the creation of the instrument itself. Apparently, it was a very difficult process, with some less than desirable prototypes; the employees at WET Labs are a highly ambitious group of people!