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Happy Cinco De Mayo! Also Know as May 5th. Today marks our half way point on our STEMSEAS voyage from Woods Hole, MA to Reykjavik, Iceland.
Traditionally we have started each learning lab session with a question of the day. The question of the day was “What is one word you would use to describe yourself?” So far, I have loved all of our questions of the day and I particularly love this question because, it helped the group get to know each other a little bit more each day and It also helps allow us to get to know ourselves a little bit more. I challenge you readers to ask yourself this same question and see what you can come up with.
Each day of this voyage we have had the opportunity to learn and participate in different scientific activities and today was no different. Todays activity consisted of making “Smear Slides” and yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. We took a small sample from previous core expeditions and smeared them on slides so we can get a closer look under the microscope. This was defiantly one of my favorite activities so far because we have already spent some time talking about coring and the type of foraminifera that we could find in the samples but, now we finally got a chance to be a part of the data analyzing process.
Even though it took us a while to get right, I think everyone enjoyed creating smear slides because it turned out to be very therapeutic. The first step was to wipe down and clean the slide. Secondly, we created a label that would indicate all the information that we knew about the sample. This would include the expedition, the site/location, number from the core, and some descriptive detail like light or dark color clay. Then we would use a flat sided toothpick to smear a small amount of the sample onto the slide. Next step consisted of adding a small drop of water to separate the sample and then placing the slide on a hot plate to dry out. Once dried we placed a small drop of adhesive on the slide, covered it with a slide cover, and let it sit under UV light. After completing those steps, our smear slides were prepped and ready to be viewed under a microscope.
Today showed me that there are really two main parts to being a scientist; either you are collecting data or you are analyzing data. I’m looking forward to see what science has in store for us tomorrow!
