Week 2: The Importance of a Little Elbow Grease in Scientific Research

I started setting up experiments this week and it was quite the experience. The background on this project that Dimin (my Ph.D student mentor) and I are working on is that an air base nearby is looking for the best method of remediation for the contaminated soil at the base. They sent several bags of samples of different kinds of contaminated soil. For this experiment I had to fill 16 glass bottles with 200 grams of one soil sample each and another 16 bottles with 200 grams of a different soil sample. From there each bottle was filled with water and we're trying different remediation methods with the bottles. Some of them have zero valent iron, some have SRS, others have whey, some have nothing but soil and water. Hopefully we'll get some informative results. 

The first soil sample I had to deal with was really thick, dense, and sticky. I had to shove spoonfuls of soil through a funnel into the bottles and I have to admit, after a while it got pretty difficult! It took some good old elbow grease to just shove the soil through the funnel, but I think that made it incredibly satisfying to finish the last bottle. I was a bit tired at the end of that day, but it was nice to know that my hard work was helping some scientific research move forward. The second soil sample was much finer and less stuck together. It went through the funnel pretty easily and it only took me a couple hours to fill all the bottles with the second sample (as opposed to four hours to fill the first set). 

It was a good weeks work and I prepped the bottles for most of the week. They're spinning in the cold room now so that they're well mixed when Dimin and I start running tests on them on Monday. We'll start by running HPLCs on the samples then go from there. I've never run an HPLC before, so I think that should be a good experience. On Friday I didn't have much to do since Dimin had to make sure that the HPLC machine was calibrated and running correctly. Since I'm no electrical engineer and I had never even heard of an HPLC until this program, there wasn't much I could do to help him. Hopefully the machine is working well and we'll be able to get good results. Until next week then!