Blog Post Week 7

By -
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 separating microplastics from regular water.

Comments

  1. Brenda ArvizuApril 6, 2017 at 9:29 PM

    Hey Jasmine, I'm sorry if you mentioned this before in another blog post but what exactly are you going to do with the sediments? In other words, what will you use the sediments for? On the other hand, keep me updated on how you plan to separate microplastics from water! I hope it’s fun while doing so! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post Week 12

By -
Image
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.
Read more

Blog Post Week 4

By -
Image
So the picture above shows the location of where I got the sample water though, though I regret not getting the coordinates of the exact location I took the water sample from because Tempe Town Lake is pretty big. This weekend while also this weekend I went to Tempe Town Lake again but the only difference was that there were a lot of dead fish just floating around and some even on shore. Which got me thinking if we might something new in the microplastic bacteria growth. There was also a report during 2014 where there was an extreme growth of E. Coli in Tempe Town Lake Water. “ Tempe has received water samples from Town Lake taken Thursday morning that show E. coli bacteria more than 10 times higher than the state's allowable” (Tempe Town Lake 'unsafe' water sample threatens race). I missed another great opportunity and forgot to take pictures of the dead fish. So perhaps maybe this week I will go again and take pictures.
Read more

"Oh The Places You'll Go" . . .

By -
Image
“It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome. That's what defines your career." —Carlton Fisk Growing up in a strict Hispanic Household my siblings and I were always told that we needed to become doctors when we grew up. That if we were doctors we would have a stable bright future. So of course in High School I would tell everyone that I would grow up to be a Doctor. I didn’t know what kind of doctor, I just knew I was going to be a doctor. Once I graduated High School and enrolled at Phoenix College, I told my advisor, “I want to be on the path that will make me a doctor”. So for 2 years I was taking all my pre-requisites to be a doctor. It wasn’t until my second year at Phoenix College and almost close to graduation that I wanted to be an ophthalmologist. So I looked online and started studying for my Optometry Entrance Exam (OAT). During that Summer 2019 of pure studying I also worked with Dr. Polidoro in her environmental/ Toxicology ...
Read more