Weekly message 11/21/2020

Happy Saturday!

I hope all of you are doing well and were able to enjoy the beautiful weather today. 

We will not have class this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. However, I will be available on Tuesday during the lab time (1:50-4:40 pm) to answer questions. If you email me, we can arrange to chat via Zoom.

There is no extra credit participation question this week. I will post one next weekend, which will be due the following Friday (12/4/2020).

Lab 4 is due Wednesday at 11:59 pm. If you need extra time, please let me know and I will provide you the 72 hr grace period (which will not include Thursday and Friday); making the due date Monday Nov 30 at 11:59 pm. 

I will work out the schedule for the team meetings for the weeks of Nov 30 and Dec  7 and will post those on LON-CAPA in the final project folder. I've been working on posting background information for each of the objectives in the same folder.

Several of you have asked about measuring the pH of the soil slurry. In some cases, the slurry is very dark and it is hard to get a proper pH reading. 

 


Here are some suggestions:

You can try a couple of things:

  1. filter the water through a coffee filter or several layers of cloth.
  2. wait to measure pH; analyze the water from the Mason Jar Test, after the sample has sat for a couple of days.

If that doesn't work, just write up what you did in the report and state that you were unable to measure the pH because of the turbidity of the sample.

Now if you really want to experiment, you can burn some toast, and scrap some of the burnt toast into the slurry to see if it adsorbs some of the color. It used to be (like when I was in Scouts many decades ago) that during first aid we were taught that "burnt toast" was used in the universal antidote if someone was poisoned and you had no other treatment and could not get to a hospital quickly. The idea was that the "charcoal" on the burnt toast would absorb the poison.(Note: burnt toast does not work as a universal antidote, so please don't try it as such).



Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and your families!



All the best,

Dr. Masten


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

API Phosphate kit

In communicating with API technical support about the KH kits, I mentioned the other kits we are using.  One of their scientists graciously provided information about the phosphate and nitrate/ammonia/nitrite kits. I've provided that information below. I did a full.. generalized.. write up on the phosphate kit because the ingredients were not proprietary. So to answer your question on phosphate, it is going to read the ppm of the phosphate ion itself. But keep in mind that phosphate we are talking about is orthophosphate, also known as “reactive phosphorus” but is generally used synonymously with “phosphate” The write up is below, if you want to pull some nuance out of it that might be helpful for your usage. I might also have one like this for the ammonia test kit as well, if it would be useful. The Phosphate #1 bottle contains sulfuric acid and ammonium heptamolybdate (information found here: https://www.apifishcare.com/pdf/API_PHOSPHATE_TEST_SOLUTION_1-1.pdf ) The ...
Read more
Greetings, I hope all of you had a good first half-week of classes.  I posted Thursday's lecture in LON-CAPA.   I will repeat Thursday's (9/3) lecture on Tuesday (9/8), so if you attended on Thursday you do not need to attend this Tuesday. There will be no class this Thursday (9/10).  Be sure to use the time to complete your first homework (Safety quiz and EHS Safety courses). The work is due by 9/11/2020 by 11:59 pm. I ordered the new practice exam for the CE and ENE exams and once I receive that, I'll finish the FE Exam Preparation Seminar, which I'll give during one of the tutorial sessions for ENE 483 this month. Details soon. You are all welcome to attend that, irrespective of whether you're enrolled in ENE 483 or not. I will send out the Zoom link by email. If you are having trouble accessing the textbook, please let me know. I made this video for ENE 483, but it should also be helpful for you. And lastly, if you have not completed the course survey, please do...
Read more