Week Seven - The week when I realized, "Ah! It's already week seven!"

This week, I worked on trying to solve The Great Mystery of the Zn Fluorescence! What ghost is hiding in the Fluoromax and making my zinc values way too high? Too bad Scooby Doo isn't around to help me with this one.

So, I ran a bunch of tests on the fluorometer; diluted samples, diluted working reagent, a bottle with only working reagent, adding different amounts of working reagent, using acid-washed bottles vs. DI-washed bottles, using quartz cuvettes vs. plastic cuvettes, etc. Finally, with Scooby Joe on the case, we figured out that the slit width we specified for the spectrofluorometer was too wide! Who would've thought it'd make such a big difference? So, now we have an idea of how to get those zinc values down lower and I will use today (Friday) to test this idea using the ammonium assay. If today is successful, I will be one happy camper come next Monday.

I've also been running some tests to see the effects of adding dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to my samples. So far, it looks like, at lower ammonium concentrations, the higher the DOC concentration, the higher the fluorescence observed. But, for higher ammonium concentrations, more DOC means less fluiorescence is observed. These are some interesting preliminary results, but I will run more complicated DOC tests today, in order to really see what's going on.

We also had an interesting speaker come to the Furse class this week. He was obviously very used to public speaking, and he seemed very passionate about his work. I enjoyed listening to his advice and his stories.

Most importantly, I've realized this week that this internship is quickly coming to a close. I made up a timeline of what I want to accomplish before the end of this internship, and it seems that I will be very busy right up until the end. I hope to get a lot done.

Aw, Scooby, you're such a clever pooch!