Research Related Knick Knacks

This whole post is about some of the quirky things I encounter in and around doing research. Like this little guy to the left. A cute frog that hopped in front of me as I walked back from lunch one day. I scrambled to grab my phone out of pocket, and was surprised when the noise didn't startle it. In fact, it just sat there posing while I got close to take it's picture! This modelling frog just had to make it onto my blog one way or another!

Sometimes I actually do bench work, and don't just tromp around in marshes all day. As part of my project this summer I will be doing redox potential of the marsh. So I've been working my way through a large bin of redox electrodes, testing each one in a variety of solutions to test if the probe is still good. Here the probe is in a ferrous-ferric solution, which is bright orange. Next to the beaker is a pink pH 4 buffer solution, which I mix with hydroquinone to make another solution.

Then today I was evacuating exertainers, which are small vials for gas samples that we can then run on a gas chromatograph (GC) to see the methane concentration. I'll be taking methane flux measurements tomorrow, which is methane concentration over time to examine differences in vegetation in connection with methane emissions. Anyways, I digress (because science is fascinating!), getting back to the picture this gauge is attached to the vacuum which evacuates the exertainers. This sign started flashing up, being not 100% familiar with the device I asked a lab mate what it meant and he told me "bat stands for battery (as in low battery) or it's the batman signal, I'm not sure" Basically, my lab is awesome!

I'm usually not inside doing bench work, I'm usually out in the field in marshes. These two pictures are my two main field sites this summer. GCREW on the left and Fox Point on the right. They are both beautiful! I would not be excited to come to work each day, if I worked inside at a desk. I love being outside with nature, doing hands-on research!

 Sometimes I take friends out to the marsh with me. One day after work, I still had some work to do out in the marsh. Because honestly that 8:30am-4:30pm workday is non-existent! I work until it gets done, regardless of what hour it is. So Hope and I went out to GCREW at about 5:30pm one afternoon to lay down some fiberglass boardwalks over the muddy patches on the way to the methane flux plots. Hope is much more used to real, mucky marshes not the luxury electrified marsh of GCREW. The boardwalk at GCREW is elevated above the marsh, and meanders through the marsh, passing by each of the many experiments taking place out there. 
 

The other day, a big storm rolled through the marsh. There was some lightening, so we finished the boardwalk we were working on and took a break to watch the weather. Gary and I got up on the boardwalk in front of the porch to watch the lightening. We tried really hard to get a picture of the lightening flashing across the sky, but were unsuccessful! But my lab mate, also named Rachel (she's big Rachel and I'm little Rachel according to our lab!) got this great picture of the sky as the storm rolled across. It's amazing! The different cloud elevations and colors contrasted against the marsh is gorgeous!