pH practice

Author: Duncan Peabody

So as I predicted our carefully planned schedule for week 1 of research is already off course. We had planned on running the experiment Wednesday. And then it changed to Thursday. But we found that we needed a little more practice. The main problem we were having was stabilizing the pH. So Sam and I have spent the past two days practicing pH adjustment and I think that we've got it down to where we can control the pH at +/- 0.1. We also decided to divide our experiment up into 4 days with 6 batch experiments each day rather than an unwieldy 24 batch experiments in 1 mess of a day. This way we can control each batch with more precision.

I'm starting to remember how bipolar doing research can make you. When things are going well you feel great and as soon as something goes wrong the world is coming to an end. But right now things are going pretty well. The apocalypse will have to wait until our next blunder.

I'm hesistant to make a new schedule...but it goes something like this. We won't start our experiments until Monday, so tomorrow we will do a couple more practice batches just to make sure we're prepared. We're also going to meet with Valentine to talk about a big picture timeline for the rest of our time here. Then all of next week will be spent on batch experiments and analysis with the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. Hopefully next Friday we will have our first set of results to share. That is if the world doesn't end first.

On a sad note, my soccer ball deflated so I can't go out and play right now.