Semester 3 week 4

Grinding is not as bad as it seems, the process for grinding has proven to be problematic. The first week with the new grinder methods were being tested and we have selected the best way to grind. Now we must look at cross-contamination and the clean up process. Sweeping our immediate area allows for us to start with a clean slate free of other debris. As we grind the friction between the file and the plastics causes for the plastic sample to become statically charged, this charge causes the sample to want to stick to any surface it comes near, clothes, the floor the vice holding the plastic and the clean up equipment. This week I created my first sample with the grinder in 30 minutes, the process is as follows:
1) Sweep the floor to clear debris from other uses of the lab.
2) Grind the plastic until sample size looks to be enough.
3) Vacuum the sample off the floor and move into beaker labeled for that sample.
4) Sweep the remaining plastic to be disposed of due to cross contamination in the broom.
These steps are our way of limiting cross contamination. being careful to collect enough of a sample before moving on as to not need to continuously change between the sample being ground.
My collection sample for the 30 minutes of grinding in week 4 are 31.94 grams, compared to several hours of grinding by hand to attain only a sample of 1.08 grams.

Sample 1(Left side) took several hours to attain through the process of grinding with hand tools
Sample 2(Right side) took 30 minutes to attain through the process of grinding with power tools 

Semester 3 Week 3

Week 3 has begun and the task of grinding has become much easier. We have a reciprocating saw with an attachment that allows for us to file and grind the plastic. This was a new experience for all of us although I have used power tools before, plastic has proven itself to be a stubborn material.  It took me half an hour to find the right speed, and direction to grind the plastic to be effective and collect the samples. Grinding too slow and the plastic wouldn't budge, grinding too fast and the heat from the friction caused the plastic to reform rather than shred. Yet in the end I found a effective way to grind away my day.

Semester 3 week 2

This is my second week back in the stem lab, today will be my first attempt to grind plastics using the manual (by hand) files and cheese shredder like file. Hopefully I find a way to stabilize the softer plastics to prevent them from continuously bending to the motion of the equipment I am going to be using.

The second part of this blog will be after I have attempted to grind the plastic:

I collected the material and equipment and began to grind. The process is simple enough, the only problem so far is that I need to find a way to collect the grounded up plastic and maintain the plastic from moving as much as it does to allow me to efficiently grind it. Samples from today's grinding were insufficient to store for use. The samples mass was approximately 1.084 grams.        

Semester 3 week 1

This week I have begun in the lab with understanding the WAESO project. As I familiarize myself with my new project, I see the need for a more efficient plastic grinding method. Eventually I will be using the plastic to perform an experiment with an attempt to identify bacteria that grows on plastic in water, after leaving the plastic in water for some time. This semester I will be working next to several other students who have worked on WAESO previously. I look forward to hearing from them about what is the most efficient way to grind the plastics.     

Semester 3 week 5

After collecting enough of a type 2 plastic I moved onto collecting sample of plastic type 5. This plastic bottle proved to be harder to grind and due to the color not contrasting with the color of the floor, I could not tell whether the ground material would be enough of a sample. I showed others my method of grinding, for their use on their projects and collected my sample. I did not collect enough of a sample from type 5 plastic which requires more work to be done then type 2 plastic and more adjustments for speed. The sample collected totals 11.74 grams

Semester 2 post 9

After having worked in an office doing research for a couple weeks, Kathleen asked if I would like to head down to the waste room and take care of some other tasks she had available for me to do. I have to say it was pretty cool being down in the waste room getting to see what labs work with and how chemicals are disposed of properly and amount of knowledge it takes to do that job. Knowing what hazards a chemical has and how to properly dispose of is no piece of cake.  especially when kits are received and the contents of the kits must be separated and disposed of separately. I never really thought about that side of the labs but its a great experience.

Semester 2 post 8

After weeks of reading scientific journals, and research I am glad to say I am eager to present this Thursday.  My presentation took some fine tuning but The finished product really has caught my attention. This was my first literature review and it took sometime to get everything organized, I feel the data was the easy part to interpret, the difficult part was finding articles that had data that would correlate with the target of my project. I read over 15 articles, examined the data and in the end had to decide which articles correlated best with the intended goal so I could fine tune the presentation and final research paper to have a conclusion drawn and explanation for the data put together.