Nathan Hinkle's blog

This was the last week for many of the interns, and final presentations were given on Thursday and Friday. Since I started a week later than most interns, I still have another week of work to do on my project, but still gave my presentation this week. In addition to preparing for my presentation, I also continued running samples and processing data. The real-life frustrations of science presented themselves on Wednesday, when my senior scientist informed me that a large portion of my data would have to be reprocessed.

This week brought another round of long days sampling data, but the data processing has been eased by my completion of a MATLAB script to correct the EEMs automatically. I ran the biodegradation samples through the fluorometer on Monday and Wednesday, and we're starting to see some exciting results - at least one of the oils is showing a significant decrease in some of the fluoroescent peaks, indicating that the bacteria are indeed breaking down the PAHs as we had hoped.

At long last, with water samples successfully acquired last week, I was able to start the biodegradation experiments. I set up two flasks with live water samples and PAHs from two different oil varieties, and a third with a mixture of PAHs and sterilized seawater, as a control. Over time, I will be measuring the fluorescence of the samples to determine how the bacteria degrade the PAHs. This week we collected the first four days of data, and though there hasn't been much change yet, there has been some activity.

Monday were the intern mid-term presentations. My presentation went very smoothly, and I was excited to hear about what the other interns are doing and see the results of their research to date. It was particularly interesting to consider the broader connections between everybody's research. We are all doing such different projects, but they all fit into a bigger picture.

This week I spent a lot of time in Excel, processing the data from last week's solar degradation experiments. I also prepared for our mid-term presentations which are happening on Monday. There wasn't much lab work to do, but next week we'll be running more PAH calibration tests, so I did some prep work in the lab.

Somehow, despite being summer, it was still overcast and rainy here in Portland for most of the week. Inside CMOP though, it's been bright and sunny, because we're running the photodegrataion portion of our experiment. These experiments are used to determine how the PAHs in oil degrade over time when exposed to sunlight. Some studies have shown upwards of 30% of an oil slick to be broken down by natural sunlight.

This week I finally started working with my mentor to create calibration curves for the fluorometric spectrometer. This process is very precise, as the concentrations are so low that spilling even a single drop could alter results. We only had 10 mL of PAHs in solution to begin with, and finished Tuesday with almost two liters of dilutions, though we only kept 5 vials. Wednesday and Thursday were spent on the fluoromax, running samples.

Somebody who has never done research before may envision a lab to be a bustling place, with machines whirring, chemicals bubbling, and people doing science. In reality, as I learned this week, research can involve a lot of waiting. My project is investigating the biodegradation of crude oil by microorganisms, and relies on some water samples from the San Francisco bay area.