First day!

Today was my first day as an undergraduate researcher at Stanford's School of Earth Sciences Undergraduate Research program (SESUR). It was an interesting but quick first day!

My postdoc research advisor Sam is currently in China collecting samples, some of which I'll be using for my project. But since she's gone, but the SESUR program has already begun, I'm starting work under the supervision of her lab-mate Sarah. While Sam studies coal pollution on agricultural lands in China, Sarah studies groundwater arsenic contamination in Orange County. Working with Sarah, however, will give me a chance to familiarize myself with how the lab works, get to understand certain aspects of soil geochemistry, and "practice" doing lab work and data analysis on a short two-week "mini-project" so that by the time Sam comes back with the samples, I'll be ready to go.

This morning I was up bright and early, since I was excited to start - but an email from Sarah had told me she'd be busy with meetings until 1 p.m. So I went for a jog to clear my head and then spent the morning studying some materials she had sent me, including some papers and her own poster from a recent conference. I tripped over phrases like "phyllosilicate clays" and "sorption isotherms", but quick googling helped to clear up most of what I didn't understand.

After lunch, I headed over to the Green Earth Sciences building, where the Fendorf lab (Sarah and Sam's lab) is located. Sarah and I first went over her project's progress so far, and she cleared up my remaining questions, and then we decided on a mini-project that I would be able to undertake over the course of the next couple weeks. I'll be using a batch reactor technique to measure arsenic sorption onto charged clay surfaces in the presence of different concentrations of calcium ions. I'm excited!

We spent the rest of the day in the lab and on Excel figuring out the different quantities of solutions we would need and checking that we had enough bottles and stock solution. I also received a brand-new lab notebook that I'll get to use for the summer. Tomorrow I'll meet some more summer interns, and we have some safety tours and things we need to do before we're really allowed to work in the lab. Can't wait to begin!