Ian Hebert's Blog (7)

With my last week of work here on cape cod quickly approaching, I am looking forward to getting home. However, there is still much more work to do, and unfortunately the work will not be completed by the time I leave. I am making good progress though, I am completing 12 samples per day and the chromatography makes the days go buy. I plan on starting to collect a t least some data during this upcoming week, but my main priority is to finish the chomatography. This trip has taught me a lot and I f… Continue

Things here in Woods Hole are settling down into routine, with work Monday through Friday from 9-5 and weekends exploring the Woods Hole area. Learning how to do the chromatography was very interesting even though each one takes time. Although unfortunately I will not be here to be able to analyze these samples, my advisor has suggested meeting up after the project is finished to discuss the results. Although I am only getting to participate in a small part of this project, I am glad that I will… Continue

Week 5 here in Woods Whole went as quickly as the rest of them and progress is starting to be made with the sediment samples. On Friday I finished running the samples through the solvent extractor, quite a chore with over 120 samples extracted. Next we start the chomatography where we will seperate the different organics to make for easier identification. This is a slow process as each column takes at least a few hours. This is a big step towards analyzing the data which should be much more inte… Continue

Week 4 in Woods Hole started with seeing Robert Ballard at multiple talks which proved extremely interesting and informative. His first talk focused on the history of his discoveries and the progression of how he formed his research group. I was surprised at how many other discoveries that he had made, that he isn't as well known for, but seem far more pertinent. Including the discovery of Hydrothermal vents in the Mid Ocean Ridge, which he mentioned multiple time that he would much rather be kn… Continue

Life here in Woods Hole is beginning to settle down. The work has become routine and I am beginning to explore the area more. I am almost finished extracting all the organics from the sediment samples, and then we will start to analyze the composition of the cores using chromatography and a mass spectrometer. I am glad to be almost done with the solvent extractor, it has become quite tedious and doing the same thing everyday can get dull. My boss has been out of the lab rather consistently but s… Continue

Organics are a tricky thing, if you’re trying to measure specific organic, then, everything i s a possible contaminate. Every surface must be covered in tin foil and all materials cleaned thoroughly in DCM (or DiChloroMethane). I have now moved beyond merely cleaning cells and we have now started to concentrate the organic matter and removing all the moisture from the sample. Hopefully after a few more runs through the concentration process, I can move on to the analysis of the samples, where we… Continue

Having never been to the east coast before, I was curious as to how different it would be. After a long day of traveling, I finally arrived in Boston where I would take a bus to Woods Hole, Mass. where I would be spending my time as a summer intern. I will be working at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute where I will be analyzing sediment samples from different lakes for rainfall data. Traveling on the bus I was amazed at the abundance and lushness of the forests. When I arrived I was greete… Continue