Filling Bags

Today we worked on setting up Alan's experiment. This one was a lot easier to do than mine because we set it up on a pond on Auburn's campus. Also, there was a dock in the middle of the pond that we could use:

When we got there, we all worked on putting these gigantic bags into the framing. That didn't take too long but it wasn't easy.


Next, I was able to test the water outside the enclosures using the hydrolab.


Alan also had me doing science with a graduated cylinder. I measured out the nutrients for each enclosure.


Finally, we had to fill the enclosures. Since this is my blog, I only have pictures of myself filling these bags--and doing everything else-- but to be honest, I only filled like 2-ish out of the twelve. It took over five minutes to pump water into each enclosure and it was pretty hard. The hose is crazy and pushes you back.

This picture's funny. I'd like to think of it as Alan approving of my enclosure filling skillzz..


After about 2.5 hours we finished the job. It looks..kind of ridiculous.. but that's OK. Alan says he's gonna use this setup to run an experiment to see how changes in nutrient ratios affect phytoplankton.


After we got through with this Alan tried to make me do MATH, which I didn't totally understand.. and so I went on livejournal and facebook. As you can tell, the afternoon was extremely productive..

Later in the day, Alan's wife took Patricia and me over to the farmer's market near the school. It would've been a lot more interesting if it weren't about 95 degrees out. Even Patricia was complaining about the heat and she's from Alabama.

RIB NIGHT made up for the intense heat. They had all-you-can-eat ribs at a restaurant downtown. I love ribs. I love my ribs. And I love everything about ribs.