Helen K White Lab

Hi folks!

My name is Oriana Chegwidden and I’m from Woodbridge, Connecticut. In September I’ll enter my senior year at Haverford as a chemistry major. I’m working in Helen’s lab this summer and we have a lot of cool projects in the works. I’m working on investigating the fate of oil in a salt marsh on the Delaware river. There have been four major oil spills in the river over the past 35 years and we’re wondering what happened to that oil. Are there still remnants of each spill? Based on the remains of the contamination, what can we say about the spill conditions, remediation techniques or the marsh’s responses to each oil? It’s exciting work, particularly in light of the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

As for the highlights so far…

1. Getting the core! Though our spirits sank lower and lower as every site we went to proved impossible to get a core, we rejoiced when we found a site with great mud. That core has since become a disturbingly significant part of my life. There’s a picture below of me at the site!

2. Getting results. We DEFINITELY have some oil in our samples! Now let’s figure out which spill(s) that oil belongs to and what the differences between the residual oils mean.
3. Playing with the rotoevaporator. A friend? A foe? The jury is still out.
4. (A non-lab highlight) Biking down the Schuylkill River Trail to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
5. Listening to NPR in lab. Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep make invaluable contributions to our lab progress.

We’ll make sure to keep you updated on lab adventures.

Until next time,
Ori

Hi! I’m Liz Coward. I am a junior Biology major and Geology minor. I have been doing research with Prof. White since Spring 2010, investigating the microbial degradation of oil and other toxins in marine sediments. More specifically, I work with incubations containing sediments from Eagle Harbor, WA that have been severely contaminated with creosote in an effort to determine the effects microbial populations might have in varying soil profiles. I have also been working with samples collected in Prof. White’s Superlab course this past semester from the Jones River, MA and looking at the association of different contaminants to different size sediment particles.

This is my first summer research experience at Haverford, and it has been great! Although not a Chemistry major, I am very interested in interdisciplinary work, especially involving environmental sciences, and have learned so much in the past 5 weeks! Going on field expeditions and other trips with the lab has been so much fun. I am looking forward to these next short weeks and more adventures, both within the lab and outside of it.

Hi! I’m Alissa Aron, I’ll be a senior this coming year, and I’m
conducting my thesis research in the White Lab. This summer I’m
working in the lab to lay the groundwork for my thesis research, which
will be looking at the structure and sources of organic matter in
aerosol and rainwater. For now I’m just sampling from the roof of
Sharpless Hall, but will be collecting samples from more exciting
places soon (suggestions are always appreciated!).

Alissa’s White Lab Top 5:
1. Collecting samples from the roof
2. Field trip to collect oil-contaminated sediment for Ori’s project
3. The intensely air-conditioned climate of the INSC
4. Working out the kinks involved in extracting organic matter from
quartz filters
5. Becoming an expert on the always expanding body of aerosol literature

Hello all! I’m writing to you from Cambridge, Mass – my fabulous home for the summer.  The KINSC awarded me a travel research grant to work for Dr. David Johnston of Harvard University’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department.  I’m about half way through my ten weeks here and already wishing for more time.

On a general scale, the Johnston Group is trying to characterize the marine and atmospheric environments of 4 to 6 hundred million years ago.  This time period corresponds to the end of the second snowball earth episode, when the entire Earth might have been covered in ice, and the beginning of complex animal life on Earth.  We want to know what conditions might have made the latter possible.  Our clues lie in the carbon, sulfur and iron contents of rock samples that, while underwater at the time, now lie in the mountains of Mongolia and Canada.

We work with shale and carbonates, but right now I am focusing on the carbonate samples.

When the rocks come to the lab from the field, they first have to be CRUSHED in a shatterbox. I load the rocks into the metal disk, clamp the unit down carefully, and press go! The machine does its thing and turns solid rock into powder.

In the wet lab, the samples are mixed with hydrochloric acid to dissolves the inorganic carbon they contain. They fizz quite a bit as they release carbon dioxide and more acid is added until they no longer bubble and the pH remains low overnight.

I then use a vacuum to filter out the clay-like residue. The yield is so small on this set that I am having trouble scraping the leftover residue from the filter paper without introducing more organic material, so I am going to try a centrifuge-based procedure next week.

The next stop for these samples is the mass-spectrometer.  I load about 4 mg of rock powder into a tiny tin cup – think a 3mm wide cupcake holder – and roll it into a tiny ball with tweezers. These can be loaded into the instrument and analyzed for organic carbon content after a bit of excel magic.

There’s a lot of work, but I’m not doing it all alone! Along with Dave, I spend the day with Andy, our incredibly helpful lab manager, and Esther, another undergrad working for the summer.

In no particular order: Tie dying my lab coat, listening to NPR, seeing Helen and Sarah Choyke, sitting in on reading/discussion groups, biking to work, building and painting a table for the lab, using the label maker... and much more!

My favorite parts of summer 2010 so far (in chronological order)

More information on our friends and collaborators can be found at the following links,

Dr. Nathalie Goodkin (The University of Hong Kong)

Pete Swanson

The Phillies

Bob Nelson (WHOI)

Chris Reddy (WHOI)