Week 3

Monday: 

The morning opened up with Dr. Brian giving us a lecture reviewing acid-base interactions, and the chlorinity and pH of the ocean. We learned how the ocean contains not only chloride and salt (salt water) but also hydrogen carbonate, calcium, and carbonate ions. All of these ions to the ocean are a huge buffer from its own acidification. In the afternoon we had a lab using Coulometry where we determined the concentration of hydrochloric acid in seawater. We had fun building the circuits, however, some groups had some issues with their equipment.  

Tuesday: 

Tuesday morning we officially started our final presentations, with a little over a week to prepare. To get a sense of what was expected, all students from Cluster 3 and 6 headed to Bonner Hall where we saw many presentation posters from graduate research done with UCSD. In the afternoon, we continued our group projects wrapping up our data collection.

Wednesday: 

This morning Brian gave us another lecture about nuclear chemistry and physics, it covered many topics in depth, boring some students, interesting others, and confusing many. However, the afternoon moral was lifted with another lab. This time we found the alkalinity of seawater using a pH reader and our calculations from Monday's lab. 

Thursday: 

Thursday looked a lot like Tuesday. We continued on our final presentations in the morning, but also had our teacher fellow Mike give us some feedback on our ethics project videos we submitted last Friday. The afternoon was one of our final days working in the lab with our project groups, many of which finished gathering all their data.

Group Members: Michelle, Mathew, Mayumi, Addy

On Friday, we took some time to analyze our oxygen data. This involved lots of time-crunching calculations and data in Excel. We then graphed our O2 vs. time and tidal depth to see any trends. (Stay tuned for our final presentation to hear if we saw any trends). On Tuesday we went down to Scripps again, but this time we were in Vaughan Hall. With the help of Daniela and Crystal, we were able to complete pH and alkalinity tests using equipment at the lab. It was interesting to complete the alkalinity test during class without the special equipment we used at Scripps, since in class we had to manually add each drop of acid. It definitely was a lot more work since we also didn't have a machine doing the calculations for us! On Thursday we were in the Deep Sea Drilling Building, and we used a salinometer to measure the salinity of our seawater samples. The $100k machine made testing the salinity very easy and efficient. (Definitely more worth it than spending $100k on a luxury car!) After we completed the tests, we began compiling data and finalizing some of our calculations. 

Group Members: Luca, Anika, Fynn

On Tuesday, our group ran the majority of our trials. Including biodiesel and diesel dilutions of B75, B50, and B25. However, we ran into a problem. The table that we've been using to set up our particle counters disappeared over the weekend. We had to improvise our set-up, which meant using lab stools. Still, everyone pitched in and we were able to finish our trials.

On Thursday, we ran into ANOTHER problem. Some of our data was not making sense this could have been due to many factors including wind, space from engine, and the fuel itself. We ran three more trials of B100, B25, and B50 to get some more data. This was our last day of running the engine. From here on out we will be analyzing data and preparing for our final presentations.