The second week of my internship has come to an end. This week was fantastic. I continued my research on food waste at college campuses and started writing part of my literature review. I also started the next phase of the project, which is designing an app that can connect hungry college students to leftover food from catering events.
On Monday, I was fortunate enough to go out into the fields with my advisor Mikaela. She is working on a separate project with a team from CSU that tests the quality of water that has been used for crop irrigation. She hopes that she will be able to tie some of the work they are doing on the farms to a chapter in her thesis. Her thesis is about how different nutrients affect the environment. This project has nothing to do with food waste project I am working on, but Mikaela felt that it would be super interesting for me if I tagged along out in the fields for the day. We visited two farms, one to take samples from an irrigation ditch and the other to install the flumes that are used to collect the water samples. The first farm we visited, we took water samples from the irrigation ditch before and after it had run through the filter strip to see if there was a considerable difference in water quality. The CSU team’s main goal through this project is to make farmers more conscious of what they are putting in the water that they use to irrigate their crops. They are using this project to educate farmers about how excess nutrients and sediment can be very harmful to the environment. Learning about this project was super exciting to me, but working around all the water lead to many many mosquitos. (Wow do I not like those; I got eaten alive!) At the second farm we visited we got to install a flume; these are used to collect water samples from the irrigation ditches. I didn’t learn much at this one, but I got very comfortable with using a shovel because installing the flume required a lot of digging. By the end of the day, I felt like a professional hole digger. Below are some of the photos I took while out in the fields.
This is field we were collecting water samples from, at the time the wheat depicted was getting flood irrigated
This is the water flume that collects water samples.
This is the inside of the water flume.
This is the Second farm where we installed the water flumes
Tuesday was a pretty typical day for me. I arrived at Mines at 9:15 and began my research. I met up with Mikaela, and we went and interviewed a woman named Kathleen about food waste and hunger at Mines. I got to learn about all the programs Mines has to combat student hunger, as well as learn about the different approaches to managing food waste they have tried. Following the interview, Kathleen and I walked around campus, and I inventoried all the food that Mines gives out for free to students. Needless to say, I really got to fine tune my counting skills. After I finished inventorying, I stayed outside and completed my work at a picknick table. I typed up the final inventory, sent it to Kathleen, and started working on the app design.
This is the Campus.
On Wednesday, Mikaela took me to the CSU lab where I got to do my very first TSS (total suspended solids) on the water we had sampled on Monday. The majority of the day was spent waiting and driving around because CSU is over an hour and a half away from the School of Mines and TSS take a long time. The process of TSS involves cleaning fancy filters with distilled water and a vacuum, then pipetting dirty water onto that water filter after it thoroughly dried in a 105-degree oven till its weight was deviating by less than 4%. I used a fancy pipette for the first time it was so exciting.
This is how we made sure the water filters were as clean as possible
The week was coming to a close. I spent Thursday and Friday on campus, writing my lit review and designing an app. Nothing too crazy, but overall still productive and fun. Thursday was mostly spent writing while Friday was primarily spent app designing. The research group I’m helping design the app is hoping to hire an undergrad student in the Fall to develop the app and hopefully sell to other campuses around the country because food waste and student hunger is a nationwide problem.
The weekend was great. I spent Saturday in Denver with friends. We watched The Secret Life of Pets 2, which is a fantastic movie that is borderline Oscar worthy! Today was Father’s Day, so I called my dad and wished him a happy Father’s Day, then my host family and I headed down to the Bear Creek Lakes by Morrison, CO, where we paddle boarded and sunbathed. After the day at the lake, we went home and made dinner; I got to try my very first oyster: 3/10 would maybe eat again–very slimy.
I am so excited to see what Week 3 has in store for me!
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