Final Reflection

Thomas Edison has failed 8000 times before he was able to find tungsten as the conducting material for light bulbs. Thus, although our research went through a lot of trial and error and still consisted many uncertainties, I learned many from the mistakes that we have been through. I also learned a lot of lab skills that I had no idea about before – how to operate equipment/ use pipet..etc.  

We came up with some further research that we will continue explore:

Since the UV Spectroscopy method only works for samples containing Lipitor concentration > 10um, it would be necessary to find an alternative way to detect concentration < 10um. Or else we do not know if small concentration of Lipitor exist when we get real soil sample.

For the Resins absorption method, although it did not work well. It told us that Resins does not work and we can move on to trying other materials.

Finally, for soil characteristics examination, I realized that there are so many factors that can effect the concentration of Lipitor. It is very interesting because then we can design experiments that set up different controls. For example, different soil with same PH, or same particle size…etc. And add Lipitor in to see the effects.

I am very sad that I was not able to properly say goodbye and thank you to Marianne face to face and didn't get to finish the experiment. However, I am extremely honored that I was able to explore the research with her. I learned many things that I never thought I would be able to learn in a lab. Moreover, I had a very good sense now of what engineering researches are like and somehow that made me less scared of college. Because of this internship, I am very certain now that engineering is the field that I am want to pursue.

Finally, I just want to thank Mr.Calos and Ms. Mossop for making this happen for me. I had a wonderful experience! J

4/27 - 5/4

4/27 - I went to the internship, but then for some reason the regulation in the lab was bad. All the acid was making the smell that marianne sent me back to school.
5/4 - supposedly my last time, but Marianne emailed me and informed me that she was extremely busy with her final exam that she could not have me there. She wished me good luck and was happy with the time she spent with me! it was real sad i didn't get to see her my last time!

4／20 Soil Sand Rocks

So today Marianne gave me more soil experiments! except this time it was with all these different samples. there were sand, rocks, and dirt.
Using tubes and ID water, I was able to test the PH of different samples of soil and compare them to see what kind of soil has the highest PH.
Using the big thingy from last post's picture. I was able to separate again the different sizes of the particles inside the soil and calculate each size's distribution.
Sand, of course, has the smallest since each particle size was tiny.
I continued to put samples of them into the oven in order to calculate different organic compound's size. However, they have to stay in the oven over night. Thus, I wasn't able to finish.
Thus, I ended up helping cleaning up the lab because there was going to be a check through on the lab after my internship. I realized that everything in the lab needs to be very carefully cleaned. All the beakers, pipets, and other stuff all need to be washed many times with water, soap, ID water and dried in order to pass the standard.

4/13 Soil,Soil,Soil!

After an extremely long pause on my research because of all the schedule changes and break, I am finally back! Today we moved to a new direction with our research!! It was really exciting!
I walked in, master of pipet-like, put on my goggles and lab coat, and Maryann gave me a bucket of dirt/soil!
I did so many different experiments on it today. Very FUN
Last time the notes I took really helped me: I worked fast although I had never done this before.
Using tubes and ID water, I tested the PH of this sample of soil.
Using this big thingy which has webs for different sizes I was able to separate different sizes of the particles inside the soil. (As the pictures shown)
I had never seen the big thingy before and it was really cool to see how it could separate all the sizes so quickly.
We are doing this so that we can have the date of normal soil: its PH value, its particle sizes; its carbolic organic values(this I have to do next time since it takes longer to measure it). And when we add concentration of Lipitor into the soil, we will be able to see the difference.
I am excited for my next visit!

4/6 Long Weekend

Pause on the project ...

3/30 Schedule Change

Due to Schedule change for revisit day i can no go

3/23 Research Day

Remember last time I talked about the structure of Lipitor?  It looks like this!
MaryAnn explains that its because of the different groups that it has makes it exhibits characteristics of both a strong acid and a weak acid,which is going to be super tricky.



So, Today! MaryAnn said that we are going to be working with soil next time, which is super exciting! (Real stuff!) We are, from what I understand, going to get soil from the outside and do expeirments to it to find out its characteristics to see if Lipitor exists in them. Thus, she thought that I should understand some basic characteristics of soil before we start anything.
Thus, she gave me her computer and log in to the RPI library and led into this ACS Publications and asked me to find articles about the following characteristics of soil. I was really amazed by such resourceful site and learned a lot from them. (I also took tons of notes!)
1. How to measure PH of a soil sample?
2. Particle Size Distribution/ Grain Size Distribution
3. Total Organic Carbon (TOC)
4. Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC)
5. Soil Moisture Content

(This is about how much notes I took for each one)
To be totally honest, although I learned a lot from reading these articles, I am still confused about some of the things or methods that were mentioned in those documents.

I hope real experiment next time will help me understand!:0
Looking forward for next visit :)!



Peggie