It is hot here
“A” Mountain
Just so everyone knows, growing up at 9,000 feet above sea level where the weather tends to stay well below even 90° F, doesn’t prepare you well for Arizona heat in July. It also means that I adore the Rocky Mountains and miss them terribly. Of course, when mentioned that I longed for a hike or something to venture outdoors and perhaps sedate my yearning of the mountains, everyone points to A Mountain. Coming in at a whooping height of 60 ft tall, A Mountain looks over the campus of ASU and gets its name from the massive yellow ‘A’ etched into its side. It’s not much compared to the 14’ers at home, and although I am still willing to hike up this “hill”, I find the heat makes even a small trek slightly unbearable. So alas, I’ll stick to admiring the A for now.
The Q Mass Spectrometer
This week at the lab involved a lot of mass spectrometry. Much like its name suggests, a mass spectrometer measures the mass of samples to find the abundance of elements in that particular solution. Three out of the five days spent in the lab this week I spent working with the Quad/ICAP Q, commonly known around the lab as just the Q. In addition to running the samples Chad and I are working on, I assisted with a few other Q runs done by other researchers. The Q takes a long time to boot up. There is a long series of checks and balances that need to be performed before any data can be collected. Argon tanks need to be full, water temperature and pressure needs to be checked, rinse for the solution must be made, the waste must be empty, tubes flowing from the sample to machine secured, programs up and running successfully, and test tuning consistent. In short, running the Q is a long process. After running it three times I think I know what I’m doing, but we will see next week when the Q runs again under my supervision.
In the mean time, I also did a bit of work on the samples in the Clean Lab. There are lots of procedures to complete on the samples such as evaporating, digesting, pipetting, weighing, and adding acids. Now that I have my lab safety training complete, Chad thinks that it’s safe to hand me a bottle of Nitric Acid and have me pour it into solutions. Naturally, the first thing I do when given this responsibility is spill the acid all over my hands. Turns out that as long as there is no acid contact with skin, we’re in the clear. So I rinsed off my gloves and replaced them with a new pair, and grabbed the bottle to retry. With the nerves out of the way, I am fully competent at handling the acids now.
Outside the Anbar Clean Lab
Over the weekend, Connor (also a Pintern at ASU) and I went around Phoenix to explore. As previously mentioned, it is brutally hot here, and so for the most part the city was empty. As of now, we are currently trying to brainstorm activities that we can do inside to escape the heat.
I’m looking forward to see what new adventures and scientific discoveries next week brings!
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