S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Jasmine Patricio

This week I went to the Biosphere field trip with Dr. Cotter and Abeer. The original vision of Biosphere 2 was to create a model of earth’s natural systems: rainforest, ocean, savanna, wetlands, and desert. This unique ability to manipulate environments provides scientists’ greater understanding of global climate change effects and causes. The mission of Biosphere 2 is to advance our understanding of the natural and manmade environment through unique experimentation, training of interdisciplinary scientists, science education and public outreach, and organization of meetings to address grand challenges that affect the quality of life and the understanding of our place in the universe.  The seven model ecosystems are: 1) a mature rain forest with over 90 tropical tree species, 2) a 2600 m3 ocean, 3) forested swamps dominated by mangrove trees, 4) a tropical savanna grassland, 5) a 1400 m2 coastal fog desert, 6) three desert hillslope grass-shrubland landscapes, and 7) Biosphere 2...

This week in Lab I was able to finish my graph for the extractions of microplastics, this means I will be able to continue working on my conclusions that was not able to finish last semester. Though notice that in SPI 6 (Polystyrene) there is bar missing which is suppose to be the Potassium Carbonate (K2CO3). The reason that this section will not have a bar of itself is because there was a problem with the percent recovery from it and the stand deviation from it. When the plastic dried out and I weighed it, it was surprisingly much heavier than it has began with. This could either mean that the plastic absorbed the Hydrogen peroxide/ DI Water and made it more dense or that the plastic wasn't completely dry. At the moment I will finish writing my report with this missing bar and will have to include this error in my conclusion claims. Until further notice to redo this part of my project. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break (:

This week in Lab the only plastic I am waiting to weigh is SPI6. The reason this one is taking longer is because when I rinsed it with DI water it soaked some of the water up which meant I had to leave it in longer to dry out than the other plastics. Then when it was completely done drying I put the hydrogen peroxide to get rid of any nature products that could have been left behind. Right now they are still drying, until they are completely dry is when I will then be weighing it and that will conclude my last sample for weighing. After that I will finally have all data to analyze. I will be determining which extraction method/ water solution works best on microplastics. I will also be determining plastic loss in all three different solutions and see if there was a was to better change the protocol that the NOAA developed for extraction of microplastics from sediments.

This week in lab I was able to finish the extraction of the micro plastics with the Potassium Carbonate, they were then rinsed with DI water through the vacuum sucker while I tried to remove the small leftover sediment. Then they were put in the heating oven so that they were dry. For the final step I put Hydrogen Peroxide in all of the sediments so that it could dissolve any nature particles left, that could affect the final measurements. This will be my final solution run that I will do. What is left to do is just analyze the data. Some of the outcomes from this solution that was different from the others was that this one smelled like the incubator that holds bacteria in the lab room, Matt said it smelled like a swamp or something but it was a really disturbing odor. Also this solution was a bit more hazardous than the others ones because it could have caused skin irritation. With this solution though it was very easy to separate the sediment from the plastic because all 1-6 pla...

This week in lab, I was able to finish all the extraction of the micro-plastics through the funnels with the Potassium Carbonate solution. Through the last trial the plastic that we shredded was actually it’s correct size, I thought it was going to be difficult to extract but most of the sediment floated through the solution on al 1-6 plastics. The next step would be to use the vacuum sucker and rinse the the sediment and solution with DI H2O. Then dry it and weigh it to compare all the differences. After, that would be completely the last step to this project and analyze the data.

This week in Lab I was able to finish all the separation of the microplastics into their appropriate containers. I also got started on the making of the Potassium Carbonate. We produced 45% of K2CO3. Materials: 2 (2,000 mL Flask) Potassium Carbonate 1 ( 1000 mL Graduated Cylinder) Weighing scale/ weighing boats Procedure: Place items 1-4 under the chemical hood before starting. To produce 45% K2CO3 only need to be wearing gloves. Weight 450g of K2CO3 and add to the 2,000 mL Flask Weight 1,000 of DIH2O with the Graduated Cylinder and put it in the 2,000 Flask Cover the top with parafilm Stir it until the water is clear Repeat the same steps to the other 2,000 Flask

Seabin, is a floating debris interception device that traps an estimated 1.5 kgs debris per day. The Seabin is a project created by Pete Ceglinski, and his team ( Andrew Turton, Sascha Chapman and Sergio Ruiz Halpern). The project was created to try to eliminate trash from water surfaces and educate society about the dangers of dumping trash in water surfaces. “ The issue of marine litter is one that will have to be dealt with for generations to come and therefore we need to provide the knowledge, tools and capacities to the decision-makers of the future, our children. Education is the first step to lasting and effective solutions. With marine litter, children can play a direct and significant role in reducing the sheer amount entering the oceans. Every child who learns to dispose of trash properly can be one less “source” person littering and they have the potential to spread the word to friends and family virally amplifying the effect.” (Seabin Project For Cleaner Ocean). I have tri...

This week in lab I shredded SPI 4, I was able to produce enough for perhaps multiple trials. Also we now have enough plastics that covered every plastic besides SPI 1. The only trouble was that with SPI 6 was that since it is Styrofoam, we have to wet the Styrofoam first in order to break it into small pieces because of the attraction that they hold together. Then after we broke it up then we had to dry it up which took a while because the Styrofoam absorbed the water.  

This week in lab I finished all the NaCl samples that were run through the vacuum machine. I also ran them with hydrogen peroxide for at least 3 days so that it could get rid of all the nature particles that could be perhaps ruin the measuring at the end. Once all the samples were dried there were some that had sodium chloride attached to them, so because that could have been also a percent error when measuring the plastic I had to clean them and wash them off with DI water and run them through the vacuum machine again. In the process of doing that I ran out of the filters that are attached to the machine so I really only got done with half of the 30 samples. Matt will be ordering more filters the following week but mean while I will be getting the next samples ready that will be run with potassium carbonate. I will have to shred more plastic for all 30 samples again. I have finished collecting sediment and those will be distributed. Really wish we had one of these machines that could...

This week in lab today I had the help from a former STEM student at Phoenix College come and help me remove the following sediment that was left in the containers with the plastic. So, what would have taken me a week or so to remove the sediment, only took a day to finish which was 5 hours since we both started at the same time. This week as well Brian showed us how he shreds plastic with the shredding machine that Matt purchased. The machine is great and it produces a significant amount of plastic within hours instead of weeks when I would just use the cheese grinder. The only objective now would be to find solid plastic that has smooths surfaces around it because it makes it easier to shred and is not much of a hassle. 

This week I have found a way to extract the leftover sediment from the containers, which required me to make another batch of 5M NaCl, which also meant I ran out of Salt already but don’t think I will be needing more anytime soon. I will be extracting some leftover sediment this week and the next. Hopefully it doesn’t require a lot of time because I want to get started on the Potassium Chloride extraction already. The only thing I am not really looking forward to with that run is having to get microplastic shredded again. The good thing is that Matt purchased this like machine that Brian tried out and he was able to produce 150 mL of of SPI 2 within about an hour compared to taking me 1-2 weeks to produce that much of a single plastic kind. We will continue using the machine that was purchased but we have to make sure we are using solids plastic because the machine will only produce more efficient if they are solids. 

During this week I have just been trying to find a way to extract the leftover sediments from the containers because when I measure the plastic I want to make sure that I am not measuring the sediment with the plastic but rather the plastic by itself. I definitely thought it was going to be easy just removing the sediments from the containers but it hasn't been so easy. The sediment is way on the bottom and trying to remove it without removing the plastic or getting plastic out is a bit hard because some plastics stick to the sediment. What I have going on now is just writing the protocol for extracting plastic from 5M NaCl. It should really be so hard other than just rewriting copy and pasting from the first protocol but adjusting it a bit. 

This week in Lab I finally measured the mass of my plastics after the funnel extraction process and found that their wasn't actually much of a difference, not much plastic was lost and there was a significant amount of plastic left to reuse in the second process of the microplastics extraction but this time with NaCl. While beginning this project I did have two incidents that stopped me from continuing my project, but all was fixed within a couple of hours and I have continued the funnel extraction of microplastics from NaCl. The reason we are now testing the microplastics extraction with NaCl is because ocean water is basically Salt water and that is what the world revolves around. I predict that the difference of NaCl from DI Water will not make a difference because i basically is water still just wil salt added. On a side note I forgot I had a few cuts on my hand and when I was running the plastic with NaCl my wounds started to hurt and sting a little more, which was a pretty ...

This week sadly I didn’t get the chance to complete my full nine hours of lab because I was scheduled to work during the weekdays at Dunkin Donuts and I was only able to complete about half of those hours, which made me really upset because during that time I could have started planning with Brian the tool that we he will be helping develop to improve the process of shredding microplastics. Next week my work schedule should be fixed again and returned to me only working weekends. My research on microplastics will continue with Matt, this term we should be coming to a conclusion with our research and have completed our official data. This term we will have student from URSA Major Club, Science Club, WAESO interns come in and help me with the shredding of the microplastics which is the only step that is withholding the process of my research. Brian will also be helping me. He will be developing a tool that will be used to shred big plastic products into microplastics size so that we do...

Hello everyone my name is Jasmine and this is my second year being an STEM student intern at Phoenix College. When I first started this program back in Summer 2016 I had completely no idea what type of research I was going to be doing nor did I know what research I was interested in. What I did know is that I wanted this internship so bad because my dream had always been to work in a lab. This past year has been one of the greatest experience of my college years, I would sincerely say that I have actually felt like I have completed so much in just one year at Phoenix College. Every 9 or more hours spent here in lab, have made me realize that saying you want to be a doctor/ biologic or anything science related doesn't just happen in a couple of years. You have to truly have to be dedicated and put so much effort into wanting to become your dream person. That you are willing to work twice as hard as you regularly have and study as twice as hard as you regularly do. I will be graduati...

Blog Post Week 10 This week is going to consist just of me working on the poster to have ready to present at Metro-Tech, though it is going to be a bit hard since I have yet to start the process of running the sediment and the micro plastic through the funnel. It is also going to be challenging since I also still don’t have any of my conclusions ready. Unfortunately, I still need to shred more plastic (SPI1) which is a long process as well. So I started to shred the plastic bottle with the shredder but got extremely irritated and have decided I am just going to try and melt the water bottle the same way I melted SPI4 in the autoclave. Since that took me less than 1 hour to shred. I also was having a hard time weighting the foam to an exact 0.5 g, so I looked up if there a possible way I could melt that as well. Luckily I found a video that prove that acetone could melt foam. Hopefully this plastic shredding could be done with and my next process could finally begin.   

What this week and last week consist of is putting 0.5 (g) of each plastic (SPI 1-7) in containers that contain 20 (g) of sediment in them. We will be running a total of 35 samples, meaning each SPI will contain 5 samples that will be run through the funnel. To create a method to extract plastic from the sediment. I used a small scale to measure out the 20 (g) of sediment, not all the samples contained exactly 20 (g), some samples contained an approximate measure of 20.1 (g) - 20.9 (g). I made a huge mistake of running 1.5 (g) of SPI 3 into one whole container containing the 20 (g) of sediment instead of 0.5 (g), which caused to have less plastic sample of SPI 3, I do still have shredded plastic left but perhaps not enough for 5 samples. I also don’t have enough of SPI 2. Which means I will have to do a lot more shredding of plastic throughout this week. Also when I was scaling the the 0.5 (g) of plastic, I used two different types of scales which could of perhaps messed up the amoun...

 During the 8th week of the second semester I had a really hard time posting anything up especially since I was terribly sick beginning Sunday, I remember waking up on Monday at 8:00 am keep in mind that I have class at 8:30am. So I wake up only to find myself feeling extremely dizzy and running to the restroom to vomit. I had an extremely bad fever a cold and to top it all off my allergies were acting up the whole time. My mom decided I stay home for the day and relax since I was practically weak enough to even walk. I took about enough medicine to take me to the emergency room and I was still feeling sick and perhaps even worst. I stayed in bed with my mom making me some “organic” remedies that she calls. On Tuesday I still wasn't feeling so good, but because i had both my BIOLEC and BIOLAB the same day i insisted on coming to school knowing I would miss so much if I didn’t come. We took a test, wasn't till the end of class where Robin noticed I wasn't looking so g...

Screening Sediment from Phoenix College This week I spent one full day screening the sediment that was collected just outside of Phoenix college, I then put the sediment into a heating container that was at a temperature of 74 degrees for one whole week. What this allowed it to do is dry the sediment and allow it to break easily so that it would be able to go through the process of screening the sediment. Then after a week passed Matt gave a tool that looked somewhat like a strainer, only that this one was exactly measured at 2mm. The reason because is because anything greater than 2mm is not considered sediment. I ran the sediment through the 2mm tool at which it separated real sediment compared to other particles like maybe rocks and other particles that were inside the dirt. This is not the tool Matt gave me but a picture I found on google, but this is somewhat of what the stainer looks like. After that was finished what we did next is get ready to create the protocol from se...

Blog Post Week 5 Protocol for melting Low- Density Polyethylene Get 11g of SPI 4 (Low- Density Polyethylene ) and put it into a pan, making sure that all the little beads are next to each other and do not spread everywhere. Autoclave the plastic. Press the pedal with your foot that is located on the bottom right corner of the machine, to open the sliding door and carefully place the pan into the machine making sure that the beads do not spread around but maintain all together into a single place. Press the pedal again on the bottom right corner to slide close the machine. Press the button that says “melt”. That is going to heat up for 40 minutes at 121° C , which involve: Cooling & Sterilization. Once the machine finishes up, there will be a beeping alarm that goes on. Put plastic gloves on first and then a pair of cooking mittens on grab the pan carefully with the mittens and put on counter shelf. The plastic should be melted completely and should be easy to remove from...

Presentation Title: Testing for Protocols Extraction of Microplastics from Sediment Research Question or Hypothesis *     The NOAA has developed a protocol, , for isolation of microplastics from environmental sediment samples,( Method for the Analysis of Microplastics in Water Samples (2016) .Micro Plastics are plastics particles smaller than 5.0 mm in size. There are two main ways microplastics are formed and enter the body of water: primary and secondary microplastics. Primary microplastics consist of manufactured raw plastic material; virgin plastic pellets, scrubbers, and microbeads that enter the ocean via runoff from land. Secondary microplastic occur when larger plastics items enter a beach or ocean and undergo mechanical, photo and/ or biological degradation. The degradation breaks larger pieces into progressively smaller plastic fragments which eventually become undetectable to the naked eye.  The purpose of this research is to determine how effecti...

The Shredding of Polyethylene The picture above from me is Low density Polyethylene, also known as SPI 4. Which items like Plastic cling wrap, sandwich bags, squeezable bottles, and plastic grocery bags are made of. This product was given to me by Matt who found it in the chemical room. I decided to use it instead of using the Plastics bags since this will be easier to shred. The Polyethylene approximately needs to be at least ⅓ of it size to fit the size of a micro plastic.It also needs to be shredded because over time plastic dissolves and turns into smaller and smaller fragments. So what I was thinking for this shredding process is to superglue a lot of the beads into like a bar soap looking shape, and then just shredding them with the object that looks like a nail filer, therefore I should be left with dust particles in the end.

Problem or observation:  Increasing amount of microplastics debris in both marine and freshwater systems has become an emerging issue affecting aquatic life. Research question: Is there a way to dissect microplastics from the seven known plastics? Background information: Micro Plastics are plastics particles smaller than 5.0 mm in size. There are two main ways microplastics are formed and enter the body of water: primary and secondary microplastics. Primary microplastics consist of manufactured raw plastic material; virgin plastic pellets, scrubbers, and microbeads that enter the ocean via runoff from land. Secondary microplastic occur when larger plastics items enter a beach or ocean and undergo mechanical, photo and/ or biological degradation. The degradation breaks larger pieces into progressively smaller plastic fragments which eventually become undetectable to the naked eye. Microplastics have many use; personal care product such as exfoliants...

Chart of different types of plastics Examples: SPI Code: Density: Made With: Medicine jars, peanut butter jars, combs, bean bags, and rope 1 1.38 g/cm^3 Polyethylene Terephthalate Containers for, mik, motor oils,shampoo & conditioners, soap bottles, detergents, and bleach 2 0.97 g/cm 3 High Density Polyethylene Pipes, and tiles 3 1.3–1.45 g/cm^3 Polyvinyl chloride Plastic cling wrap, sandwich bags, squeezable bottles, and plastic grocery bags 4 Range of 0.910–0.940 g/cm 3 Low-density polyethylene Plastic diaper, tupperware, margarine containers, yogurt bottles, syrup bottles, prescription bottles, stadium cups 5 0.855 g/cm 3 , amorphous 0.946 g/cm 3 , crystalline Polypropylene Coffee cups, plastic food boxes, plastic cutlery, packing foam, packing peanuts 6 0.96–1.04 g/cm 3 Polystyrene Baby bottles, large, compact discs, medical storage containers 7 Acrylic : 1.18 g/cm³ Nylon : 1.15 g/cm³ Polylactic Aci...