Yesterday and Today !!

Tuesday: Was probably the best day of the summer so far. Six of us went to set up my experiment at Lake Martin including Alan. It was a big project so we had to take two trucks and two boats. We left campus at 6am and picked up the boats. Since it was so early, Alan set us up with some tasty doughnuts:
Once we got to the lake, we tied the enclosures together into one long row. This part didn't take too long because we put the cans and frames together on Monday. It just looked pretty stupid because it was a line of 18 trashcans surrounded by pvc
pipes..


Next, we towed the cans out to the center of the lake to fill them with water. But, because the whaler boat didn't start, not only did we tow the cans but also we had to drag Alan and Patricia in the whaler. It..once again..looked really weird-ish. Just keep in mind that we're doing all of this near a high security dam, so there are guys watching us on security cameras when we look like this:


Once we reached a good point a little ways out from shore, Michael and Alan began to fill the barrels with a pump they'd brought. This pump is huge and sits in to bottom of the boat. It was really complicated because they had to balance on the side of a not-so-sturdy boat while holding a heavy tube filled with water. The water was passed through cloth filters before it finally made it to the bucket:

Finally the filling was finished and we towed the cans to a little inlet where we had previously put the Daphnia last Wednesday. Michael checked the Daphnia cans to see if the animals were still alive and they were (!). Even the can I had accidentally got sunscreen in still have Daphnia. SCORE.

And so we tied off the cans using rope and bricks and Michael and I will come back to check them next Tuesday. Right now everything sorta looks like this (minus the cans not floating on top of the water):

Finally, we took water samples from the lake and from one of our trashcan enclosures to run tests on. After that, Alan left us kids to take the Geology boat out on the lake. We found an island that had an awesome beach and hung out there for the next three hours. It was such a hot day (high 80s/ low 90s probably) and the water was around 80 so it was really perfect. We swam for EVER before finally heading back to campus.

^We're really creative and outdoorsy by trying to play baseball with a pine cone and stick..

Back at Auburn, Michael showed me how to filter the water we collected in order to run tests. That only took about 10 minutes or so but it'll suck when we have to do it for all 36 enclosures. THAT will take a few hours. After leaving the lab, the rest of the day I hung out in my room, exhausted, and watched Avatar the Last Airbender. Har harrr..

Wednesday (Today): Alan made us go to this dirty, sketchy restaurant called "The Coop," where they do fried chicken. This was my first experience eating fried chicken in the south and it was so stereotypical because The Coop looked totally ghetto-southern and probably got a C- from the health department. Since Patricia goes to Tuskegee University, she also showed us around her campus and I liked it. Patricia said she'll take me down there and show me around sometime.