Home stretch...

The week is not quite done, but I've caught a bit of a break, so here I am. This marks the end of my 8th week here. This week, I had a bit of an epiphany as to why the data came out strange on the T. weissflogii calibration. Our scale factor turned out to be almost exactly double the scale factor from the WET Labs calibration ten years ago. These instruments don't drift more than 5% or so in that amount of time -- they're built very well. There are two ranges for these sensors: 0.03-75.0 ppm and 0.10-150 ppm. The normal range covers only half of what the high range covers. Our fluorometer was calibrated in the normal range, however, my suspicion is that somewhere along the line, the fluorometer was tuned to the higher range. These senors are linear, so it would make sense that doubling the range would half the sensitivity. This would explain why we got voltages that were half of what we should have and a scale factor twice as large. Hopefully I can validate this on Monday when I test the second culture. We only have a limited amount of culture stock to work with, so I'll have one chance. Preparation is key! I'm excited to present my 'almost-final' report in a few hours and excited to hear finals presentations from the other interns!