Week 5:
A Special Visitor

June 23, 2021

Monday was a very fun day! Professor Rhawn came all the way from Iowa to South Carolina to visit the campus and see the lab facilities. The day started out with working on the sensor with Chandler like usual, it wasn’t long before I made the trip to Professor Tye’s office and found Professor Rhawn. After exchanging greetings, I gave Professor Rhawn a tour of the lab and talked about the work in water quality analysis and wastewater I was doing. He even met a few of my fellow lab mates. Funny enough, when I introduced my roommates and their lab project it turns out my roommate Kristin was his server the night before.

After, giving the tour we all made our way to the Port Royal Sound maritime to receive a tour there and eat some lunch. At the Maritime center, we met with Kat (the previous recipient of this fellowship) who is currently interning at the center. The day ended with Professor Rhawn, Professor Tye, Kat, and I enjoyed a very nice dinner on a waterfront.

During my free time on Monday, I spent it working on extracting the RNA from our wastewater samples. The process including a lot of waiting for the centrifuge to finish spinning and was fairly straightforward as we simply followed the instructions on a kit. On Tuesday, I was not feeling well so I took a rest day from coming into the lab, but Chandler deployed the sensor for a 24-hour run. Wednesday was spent on the harbor of the Maritime Center. Chandler and I sat on the harbor for three hours to take hourly measurements on the YSI on the DO, temperature, and salinity to compare to the water sensor. After those three hours, we returned to the lab to look at the data. For some reason, the sensor stopped taking measurements at midnight and then took one measurement at 11 am. It was back to troubleshooting. At some point during the day, Chandler showed his tank of florescent corals that he sells for his business.

Thursday was spent splitting my time working on the sensor and processing the new wastewater samples. The process was the same as detailed in my previous blog post, since my lab mates and I knew what we all were doing know the process went more efficiently. We ended up eating at this lovely café for lunch and I had this amazing tomato pie. Despite the process being more efficient this time, it still took several hours, and I did not make it back to my room until five pm.

Last but not least is Friday, the day was spent working on the sensor. Chandler, Professor Tye, and I discussed buying new parts to try out and possibly using an isolator to prevent the sensors from talking to each other. Professor has a theory that the DO sensor is showing reading for the current of the circuit and that is why we are having issues with it. Hopefully, the isolator will work. During the lab, my roommates, Kristin and Iesha, blessed me with a delicious donut (though it was no Krispy Kreme).