Week 1: Synthesizing Mn-oxide

This week, for the most part, I have been working on synthesizing manganese oxide for use in a later experiment. This mostly consists of adding KMnO4 to NaOH slowly while it stirs and then adding MnCl2 to that even more slowly. On Tuesday, I spent about an hour adding these things drop by drop, only to later discover that the pH of one of the NaCl washes was too low and that it would have to be done again the next day. After that it was mostly just a lot of centrifuging and washing in NaCl.

This week, I've also gotten to watch Roberto do a few things with his anaerobic cultures from another project. Everything involved with that takes quite a while because it all has to be oxygen free. Right now, we're in the process of making some media for those cultures, which we'll have to boil, autoclave, and flush with gas.

In my free moments, I've been reading up on manganese oxidation and the microbes that do it and also doing some writing in my lab notebook.

All said, I was a little nervous coming in at the beginning of the week, but it's looking like it'll be a good summer!

Graham Frank