Wow! It’s hard to believe it’s already been 3 weeks at the Morton Arboretum. During week 3 I got to help out with a couple other research projects that are going on right now. I could go into great detail about the exciting methods used and the hypotheses being tested, but instead I decided to save you some reading time and summarize each of the three tasks I worked on last week into a short poem. Remember, I am a scientist- not a poet, so don’t judge these too harshly!
I worked with Kirsten, another research fellow,
She is studying leachates using Chemistry and Biology.
We collected some leaves that were brown, green, and yellow,
And measured them all using scanning technology.
I helped my mentor Meghan with a project on nitrogen deposition.
Installing 7 collection devices per plot was our mission.
To do this, we hammered stakes in the ground,
And onto the stakes funnels were bound.
So, later she can see nitrogen in each different condition.
My final project of the week,
Was lab prep for testing the soils that I seek.
I labeled test tubes, hope they don’t leak,
I mixed some chemicals that did not reek.
And wore safety goggles looking like a chemistry geek.
Watch out for my next post about taking soil cores and starting lab analysis!