Over the past week I have taken out the plastic stripes in the plant pots, and winogradsky columns. The plastic stripes in all of the plant pots had no change at all. I was a little disappointed, because I was hoping to find something. However, I kind of expected that to happen, because plastic takes a lot of time to degrade. The purpose of planting them in the pots was to see if phytoremediation could accelerate the degradation. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and the plastic stripes remain unchanged.

     

The winogradsky columns before opening them

   The good news is that I did find a bit of change in the weight of the plastic stripes in my winogradsky columns. The change wasn't major, but then again I didn't leave the stripes a long time. Maybe there would have been a greater change if have done that. Now I am ready to move on to the next stage of my project…..identifying the bacteria. That is going to take me a while, and I am not going to finish this semester. 

I didn't collect any data this week, but I did manage to come up with a method for doing this. However, I realized that this is going to take some time. I was hoping to be able to identify the bacteria by the end of the semester, but that is not going to happen. On the bright side, I will be able to have my data on percent degradation. I am really excited, but it is very nerve wrecking. What if there is no change?? There is always that possibility, but then again think about all of the great scientists that have failed once or twice. Hopefully, that won’t happen to me. Other than that, I didn't do anything besides finishing my rough draft. I got a little distracted along the way, because the ant farms in the lab are amazing. However, I think the paper is looking good.Hopefully, next week I collect my data for the final draft...

Ant farms are awesome!!! 

        Are you kidding me??? I can’t believe that is Thursday already. Like I said before, time doesn’t wait for anyone. I feel like I haven’t done anything, and the week is almost gone.  I honestly don’t have anything to do for my project, because I am pretty much waiting to collect the data. I talked to Matt, and he said that I need to start collecting the data next week. I am very excited to see the results of my hard work. However, I don’t look forward to the smell that I am probably going to encounter along the way. Anyway, this week I started to work on my research paper. I have barely started the abstract, and background information. So far it looks good…

I can't believe how time flies by.




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