Pieces of the science

These are some scenes from around the lab, cumulatively photographed. Contrary to the cowboy-like diving tales, we spend most of our days in these rooms, working hard on keeping the forams we collect alive and in culture.

The station for making seawater, doing alkalinity titrations, and other important-sounding things.

We usually save these important things until after dinner, which is why this post is vacant during daylight hours.

Looking at individual forams under the microscope.

Each one lives in a jar. They are really small.

View into an uncapped jar from above. The center of the jar is the dark round blob in... well, the center. The foram is the whitish spot just below and to the right of the center of the jar. Cameras don't like to focus on them, or, alternatively, they are just camera-shy.

No,  really. I did mean really small.

The jars live in a water bath at constant temperature.

Fluorescent lighting is unflattering for everyone

A lot of microscopy, as one might imagine.

The experiments I'm running this summer involve a lot of pipetting. When we first arrived, there was this strange hood, sort of like a plexiglas rabbit hutch, that was in our way, so we moved it up onto the countertop. This has become my de facto pipetting hutch, and I can often be found seated here, elbows dripping.

Aren't the colored dots festive?

You're totally not supposed to do this.  

We take lots and lots of water samples. We also do lots and lots of dishes.