This morning, I went into the lab next door to get some distilled water (the still is set up in that lab; you can buy lab-grade distilled water but most labs that don't need an extreme level of purity simply make it). The department I am in is called Animal and Rangeland Sciences, and the lab next door is being used by some of the rangeland folks. They study all aspects of rangeland: development, ecology, flora/fauna, hydrology, grazing, etc. One of the faculty has a grad student or post-doc, I'm not entirely sure of his status, visiting for the summer. I walked in to find this visiting researcher filling a 10-gallon aquarium with dirt and water. Um, I asked him, are you making a tank of mud? Yep, he said. I said, why are you doing that? He told me they wanted to test a set of subsurface temperature sensors that will be installed in a muddy area--he was replicating the field setup in the lab. With a tank of dirt and water. I laughed and said, that's pretty neat, and I'm glad I don't have to clean that up!
Then again, on Sunday, I have to collect 10 g of clean excreta (that is, chicken poop) from each of our 16 pens. The samples can't be contaminated with anything like litter or feathers. Imagine a poop lying there: I have to scoop off the top part that isn't touching anything. And I have to find enough fresh piles to make 10 g from each pen, which isn't much in terms of actual volume (a paperclip weighs about a gram), but I will have to hunt around each pen to find the freshest, cleanest poops.
Science is fun!
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