Today I got up late after being in the lab until 11 last night. I did some organizational stuff in the lab, completed my progress report, and also set up some new experiments.
Then I went off to lunch. Today was rice and fish. What a wonderful, surprising change from the normal rice and beans. While at lunch I dropped my knife on the ground. Within 3 minutes there were hundreds and hundreds of ants swarming over the knife. It was ridiculous!
Then on the way back I stopped and talked to this guy who I making a movie for something or another. He had talked to the fish guy a while back and I vaguely remember him saying something about him working with high school students. Well word apparently got around that I was a high school student and now he wants to interview me or some such nonsense. So we’ll see how that goes, but I hopefully won’t have to deal with it for another week or so.
Things at the lab bench have been going well; I’ve finally started working on my actual plants. But my basic chemistry skills are seriously lacking. I need to go back to chemistry! No, seriously though, I am really starting to see how important basic chemistry is to any career in science. For example, unit conversions and dilution problem seem totally pointless but if you don’t know how to convert ppm to ppt you’re in trouble. “If you are given a 70% ethanol solution and you need to make a 50% solution with a final volume of 10ml, how many ml of ethanol should you use?” That actually happened to me. Swear to god. My life is one very large chemistry problem.
There has also been this huge miscommunication between my mentor in Indiana and me. It is really frustrating as we are both totally failing to articulate what we are saying. The result is a lot of chaos. So kids, pay attention in English too!
Hmmm let’s see what other subjects I can pull for. Mental math anyone? Super duper important. Want to know if your numbers seem reasonable? Well you’ll have to multiply 2 digit numbers in your head. Want to know how many more ml of ethanol you will need if each container has 7ml of ethanol and you need to make 60-46 more containers? Quickly now, someone is watching you waiting for the answer.
History meah... not so much here in the science world. But foreign language, oh my. Quite useful. You need to tell the taxi driver that your friends in the cab in front of you have the directions so you need to follow that car. Or you need to say... buy a candy bar (just the necessities). Knowing Spanish is oh so helpful.
Well teachers there was my pull for your subjects, hope you liked it. Seriously though, it is really cool to come here and see subjects that you may have thought have no relevancy become absolutely crucial in everyday life. Quite cool indeed.
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