finally starting what i hope will be semi-regular updates
inspired by kara's wonderful overachievement log, i plan to make myself do more things too. like updating this journal. i am a naturally private person and so many times i've not posted things because i didn't want to share them - not anything horribly bad or emotional, just everyday things. so in the interest of becoming more comfortable with sharing my feelings and thoughts and dreams with other people, here goes. i have been doing research in the REU program at WashU for the past week, and i am already very glad that i am here. those of you who are not attracted to science can skip this next paragraph, because i am going to describe my extremely interesting research project.
I am working in the ACL (Aquatic Chemistry Lab, not the thing in your knee) with Dr. Giammar as my research advisor. This in itself is exciting, because I had him for a class this spring and I can say that he is definitely one of the best teachers I have ever had, especially at WashU. Anyway, I am researching the adsorption of lead onto titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Practical applications for this are water treatment, because lead is one of the most common contaminants. Basically I mix up many, many suspensions of TiO2 in this ultra-pure filtered water, add a background electrolyte and buffer solutions to hold the pH constant, and add lead nitrate solution in varying concentrations of lead. Then the suspension gets put on a shaker table to equilibrate, after which I centrifuge the suspensions and filter the supernatant liquid. I take samples of the filtrate and measure the dissolved lead concentration using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and ICP - mass spectroscopy. By comparing that value to the amount of lead that I put into solution, I can determine how much was adsorbed to the TiO2. I do this whole procedure at a variety of pH's and lead concentrations. So far I have done extensive calculations in Excel to determine when solid lead hydroxide will precipitate in these suspensions. At higher pH and concentration combinations, precipitation will occur, and there is no way to tell whether the lead that was in solution has actually adsorbed or whether it has just precipitated out. So before I could start, I had to figure out how to avoid this problem. I am currently calculating how much of each stock solution (TiO2 suspension, buffer, background electrolyte, lead nitrate) to add to each different suspension. Tomorrow I hope to start running suspensions through the experiment process.
What I am really excited about is that Dr. Giammar wants the students working with him to actually be doing research instead of acting as lab technicians. Thus, I had to design this experiment myself, based on a few procedures other people had done with similar projects. Some people working with other professors have a procedure more concretely hammered out for them or are working on the same project as a grad student, but I get to make more decisions. It's harder and a bit more stressful, but when I tell someone I am doing research, I really am, not just working in a lab (although that in itself is cool). Another exciting thing is that I could get published from this. The project that I am doing is part of a larger project that a girl who graduated was doing. She wrote an extended abstract which was submitted to the American Chemical Society last September, and the final paper will be presented early this fall. Since they submitted the abstract before finishing the research, my work will be going into that final paper. If it is published, my name goes on it as well. So that is a very nice bonus.
I am also happier than I thought I would be about spending the summer in St. Louis. Scads and scads of my WashU friends are here over the summer, coincidentally, so I get to hang out with them. I also have time to really enjoy the city, which I don't get to do during the school year. There are so many free and cheap fun things that I will be able to partake of, including Shakespeare in the park, the zoo, museums, the Loop (especially bubble tea, thai country cafe, and vintage vinyl), city museum, and the huge Fourth of July festival. What makes it even more fun is that I have met some wonderful people here in the REU program from other universities, and even things that I have done/seen many times before are more interesting with people who have never done/seen them. I also get to play in a quartet - my friend Andrea from the WashU symphony is from St. Louis and has a quartet. Their cellist is out of town this summer, so she asked me to sub. Our second gig of the summer is tomorrow, so I hope the frequency continues. I like the money, but I also just love to play. We do the standard wedding music that I've played in quartets at home, but we've also got some harder stuff, so it's fun.
I do of course miss home and, to a lesser extent, home weather. I definitely like that it is cooler here, but it is also more humid. And of course, the rain. Today I walked blithely out of the lab (why blithely? because I am always in a good mood after talking with Dr. Giammar, who I again plagued with questions today), bounded up from the depths of the urbauer basement to ground level, and looked out the window to find that it was raining. Now, there is something about almost every weather condition that I like, and I generally don't mind the rain. However, I was all the way across campus from the dorms, with my laptop and a bunch of CDs (since our lab only gets one radio station), no jacket, and no umbrella (because was there any hint of rain earlier in the sunny day?). So I was considerably less blithe until I reach Mallinckrodt, remembered that the bookstore sold umbrellas, and bought one to replace the dilapidated wreck that I own. Anyway, it all turned out well, but it just reminded me that I wasn't home, because at home I could have waited about 10 minutes and the rain would have stopped.
Okay, I've been typing for about 20 minutes now, so I will leave my adventure in downtown St. Louis for another update when I have less work to do. Hmmm, maybe my inability to write anything succinctly is the reason I haven't made a habit of this. I guess practice makes perfect.
I am working in the ACL (Aquatic Chemistry Lab, not the thing in your knee) with Dr. Giammar as my research advisor. This in itself is exciting, because I had him for a class this spring and I can say that he is definitely one of the best teachers I have ever had, especially at WashU. Anyway, I am researching the adsorption of lead onto titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Practical applications for this are water treatment, because lead is one of the most common contaminants. Basically I mix up many, many suspensions of TiO2 in this ultra-pure filtered water, add a background electrolyte and buffer solutions to hold the pH constant, and add lead nitrate solution in varying concentrations of lead. Then the suspension gets put on a shaker table to equilibrate, after which I centrifuge the suspensions and filter the supernatant liquid. I take samples of the filtrate and measure the dissolved lead concentration using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and ICP - mass spectroscopy. By comparing that value to the amount of lead that I put into solution, I can determine how much was adsorbed to the TiO2. I do this whole procedure at a variety of pH's and lead concentrations. So far I have done extensive calculations in Excel to determine when solid lead hydroxide will precipitate in these suspensions. At higher pH and concentration combinations, precipitation will occur, and there is no way to tell whether the lead that was in solution has actually adsorbed or whether it has just precipitated out. So before I could start, I had to figure out how to avoid this problem. I am currently calculating how much of each stock solution (TiO2 suspension, buffer, background electrolyte, lead nitrate) to add to each different suspension. Tomorrow I hope to start running suspensions through the experiment process.
What I am really excited about is that Dr. Giammar wants the students working with him to actually be doing research instead of acting as lab technicians. Thus, I had to design this experiment myself, based on a few procedures other people had done with similar projects. Some people working with other professors have a procedure more concretely hammered out for them or are working on the same project as a grad student, but I get to make more decisions. It's harder and a bit more stressful, but when I tell someone I am doing research, I really am, not just working in a lab (although that in itself is cool). Another exciting thing is that I could get published from this. The project that I am doing is part of a larger project that a girl who graduated was doing. She wrote an extended abstract which was submitted to the American Chemical Society last September, and the final paper will be presented early this fall. Since they submitted the abstract before finishing the research, my work will be going into that final paper. If it is published, my name goes on it as well. So that is a very nice bonus.
I am also happier than I thought I would be about spending the summer in St. Louis. Scads and scads of my WashU friends are here over the summer, coincidentally, so I get to hang out with them. I also have time to really enjoy the city, which I don't get to do during the school year. There are so many free and cheap fun things that I will be able to partake of, including Shakespeare in the park, the zoo, museums, the Loop (especially bubble tea, thai country cafe, and vintage vinyl), city museum, and the huge Fourth of July festival. What makes it even more fun is that I have met some wonderful people here in the REU program from other universities, and even things that I have done/seen many times before are more interesting with people who have never done/seen them. I also get to play in a quartet - my friend Andrea from the WashU symphony is from St. Louis and has a quartet. Their cellist is out of town this summer, so she asked me to sub. Our second gig of the summer is tomorrow, so I hope the frequency continues. I like the money, but I also just love to play. We do the standard wedding music that I've played in quartets at home, but we've also got some harder stuff, so it's fun.
I do of course miss home and, to a lesser extent, home weather. I definitely like that it is cooler here, but it is also more humid. And of course, the rain. Today I walked blithely out of the lab (why blithely? because I am always in a good mood after talking with Dr. Giammar, who I again plagued with questions today), bounded up from the depths of the urbauer basement to ground level, and looked out the window to find that it was raining. Now, there is something about almost every weather condition that I like, and I generally don't mind the rain. However, I was all the way across campus from the dorms, with my laptop and a bunch of CDs (since our lab only gets one radio station), no jacket, and no umbrella (because was there any hint of rain earlier in the sunny day?). So I was considerably less blithe until I reach Mallinckrodt, remembered that the bookstore sold umbrellas, and bought one to replace the dilapidated wreck that I own. Anyway, it all turned out well, but it just reminded me that I wasn't home, because at home I could have waited about 10 minutes and the rain would have stopped.
Okay, I've been typing for about 20 minutes now, so I will leave my adventure in downtown St. Louis for another update when I have less work to do. Hmmm, maybe my inability to write anything succinctly is the reason I haven't made a habit of this. I guess practice makes perfect.