6/18 First Day in the Lab

Waiting for Scott at a Piazza

Today has been amazing.  There is really something about science that is just so utterly cool!  Lexy and I started our day at a reasonable 8am.  We met Scott for a cafe at his favorite bar, then continued to the University.  Typical university, pretty comparable to some of the buildings up at UNR.  The staff here first set us up with our own room to use their internet for our blogs, research, and lesson planning.  Love it!  Really fast internet, so posting pictures here is easy now.  After a good morning of playing internet catchup, we got to go into the lab.

Irene and Scott walking us through the procedure

Refrigerator full of core samples waiting to be processed

Now, before I dive into this, I have to remind you I’m an education major.  Ask me to cut and paste, I’ll show down any fifth grader.  I didn’t even know what the autoclave was at my school for years, and I’m still too intimidated to use it.  As Scott was walking us through what he wanted us to do, I probably felt like what my freshman feel like as I walk them through a lab.  If you aren’t familiar with the equipment, or if you are flat out afraid of it, you get this incredible sense of being lost and it’s hard to follow what’s happening.  After actually going through all the steps, I found it wasn’t so bad, although at first I was nervous.  It’s been years since I’ve had that nervous feeling so this was a good reminder of what my students must feel the first time I explain the detailed labs in my classroom.  

Measuring out the Sodium Metaphosphate for the samples

The purpose of this project is to reconstruct a time period of global change in this region.  Before we came here, really over the course of the last year, Scott and his group have been coring lakes.  I’ll be able to share pictures with you on this next week when we go core a lake together.  The process of coring is essentially taking a large pipe and pushing it into the sediment at the bottom of the lake.  You can see in the pictures the long tubes, these are filled with sediment.  They have cut the tubes in half, and the “working” half has had a u channel removed from the center of it.  These samples are at the Magnetism Lab where they are (obviously) looking at the magnetic particles.  The rest of the working sample is what we have started processing.  The second half, the “archive” half, is being left undisturbed and kept for reference.

"Working" side with channel removed, "Archive" section is still whole

Magnetic stirrer!

The first step for us was to mix a detergent like solution to soak the cores in.  Luckily Lexy has a background in lab work, and she was a great leader helping me through this process.  We first made a 5% solution of the sodium metaphosphate.  I got to measure it out.  Those electronic balances are pretty cool (nudge nudge Santa!).  We then mixed this with deionized water.  This was the fun part.  (Pretty sure Lexy thinks I’m crazy...).  The lab has awesome machines that mix the solution for you!  The flask is placed on a plate then you put a magnet in the flask and turn on the machine. The mixer spins the magnet!  Then you can add the solute without having to stop and mix.  A scientific mixing machine.  Who’d have thought!?  (Lots of people I’m sure, but I’m easily impressed)

Lexy removing 5cm of core to be processed

After the solution was mixed I was feeling much more comfortable.  I don’t work with real chemicals often, certainly something I need more practice doing.  (Again, something to think about with my students.  Working with lab equipment makes it less scary, and easier.) 

The next part was also fun!  Playing with dirt!!!  Irene had already started the core we were going to prepare, so it was very easy to just continue from there.  First we collected as many beakers as we could, all over 400mL.  After labeling with the lake code, year, sample site, push number, then depth, they were were rinsed out with the deionized water and then filled with 250mL of the 5% sodium metaphosphate solution.  The working side of the core had previously been marked out by 5cm sections, so the next step was to remove 5cm of the sample at a time and place it in the beaker.  The purpose of the solution is to break apart the sediment, releasing any larger (and hopefully organic) matter in the sample.  This helps remove the possibility of destroying any fragile matter.  After placing the sample in the beaker, they were covered with plastic wrap and left to soak overnight.

Here's a video of of the process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1186V406_8

Soaking core samples in the beakers, next core
to be processed in front

We created 22 soaking samples which we will examine today under the microscope for any organic matter.  Let me describe briefly what we are looking for.  So again this is looking at global climate change and with climate change comes a change in plant life.  The pollen in the samples is examined to determine the species of plants that were growing around the lake at a given time.  We are also looking for any terrestrial organic matter that we will be able to carbon date.  The organic matter has to be terrestrial due to the high amount of rocks containing inorganic carbon around the lake.  Sediments from these rocks have washed into the lakes, so the organisms there have used this carbon which cannot be carbon dated.  (The dates would turn out much older than the organism really is).  Terrestrial plants use organic carbon from the atmosphere, so by carbon dating this we get a more correct and specific date.  If we are able to find terrestrial plant matter in the samples we can then accurately place a date on that depth, then compare those findings to written history.

Sooo, that’s what I’m doing here in Italy.  Not really a sight seeing trip, but really I find this just as exciting as wandering around Rome.  Yup, I’m a true nerd.  Tomorrow we are sifting through the samples, so I’ll explain the second half of this process then.  

Me watching Scott pick out the next core