19 July 2008 Soil Slurry Lab Day

Polar Date:  July 19, 2008

Blue skies returned!  People were overjoyed especially those who had been working indoors for 4 solid days.  I was the opposite though, since I had been in the field for the cold rainy weather and today was an indoor lab day.

The soils in Lab 4 were ready to be processed yet again.  This time we were taking the small samples Karl weighed, adding 45 ml of reverse osmosis (RO) water, blending them in the kind of blender normally used for making smoothies , then pipetting 1 ml of the soil slurry into 10ml test tubes that had already been preloaded with 9 ml of RO water.  The test tube was shaken and from that 2 slides were made.

 Each slide had 10 tiny little wells or depressions in them and into 5 of the wells, a drop of the prepared sample was placed.  One of the slides will be used to see how much fungus is in the sample and the other slide will be used to see the amount of bacteria present.

My job was to blend the samples, which entailed a lot of rinsing of blenders after slurrying and getting more RO water when I ran out.  It was a good job for me, because it allowed me to work  my upper body!  We had 80 or so samples and finished the job in less than 4 hours actual working time.  We took a few breaks because the work needed to be precise and we didn’t’ want to start making mistakes.   Karl was so relaxed on one of the breaks he took off his hat!

The day passed quickly with the sunny skies and nice weather making it a happy day for all, even those people like me who worked indoors all day.  After all, the sun stayed up all night, so the sun could still be enjoyed. 

Dinner consisted of eggplant Parmesan or chicken and ziti noodles with pancetta and broccoli in a creamy Alfredo sauce; caeser salad, mixed squash and carrots, and garlic bread. Cake and/or cookies were available for those who chose to partake in dessert.

Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964