VI: Presentations, cooler temperatures, and resolving the outliers of decay curves

This week I embarked on another temperature study on the decay of persulfate. My previous data was taken at 70° C to provide strong comparisons with reference literature. That data was particularly clean and fit well to our hypothesis for first order kinetics decay model. The half life for persulfate decay was 8 hours in deionized water and 10-11 hours in saline samples. Unfortunately, my workday limited the possibility of taking measurements for sebsequent half lives. Therefore, at a lower temperature I could observe slower decay which extends over several days. My temperature of choice has been 60° C because I estimate the half life will be 1-1.5 days, even in seawater.

I put the persulfate samples into the hot water bath Tuesday at 11am. The first day included hourly samples, but each following day has fewwer samples. The new data is great for comparison with the 70° C data; Ive resolved questionable outliers and confirmed trends between samples of differing persulfate concentrations. There are also some unexpected differences between saline and fresh water samples. I look forward to posting my findings at the beginning of next week.

Last week was a whirl of presentations and data analysis, so I'm quite happy that this week afforded more flexibility and time in the lab. After a minor breakdown due to exhaustion from life outside of the lab, I have a refreshed, optimistic outlook; beyond the halfway point of this summer I continue to be thankful for this opportunity to gain experience in research and to learn more about myself. I've also doscovered that sharing watermelon is an excellent way to become more acquainted with lab-mates.

Today we are headed to the main OSHU campus downtown. I'm very excited to ride the gondola, but perhaps more relevent is the special tours of the labs and the discussions with representatives of various graduate programs. I think it will be a highlight of the summer.

**Written Friday July 16th, reposted Monday July 19th when noted as blank on the blog wall.