Today we got to the lab to do as much as we could with the little time we had left. We worked from 10am-3pm and, after taking a break for lunch, came back and said goodbye.
This morning Dr. Sedlacek and Sean loaded the mass spectrometer and got some data, but luck was not on our side and there was a voltage spike which meant we had to pump down the machine and restart. Unfortunately, the time that would take meant we could not do any more analysis with the mass spectrometer on the trip.
In the lab, us BETA students split up the work and while Juliana and Riley worked on passing more samples through the cation exchange columns, I worked on cleaning the "dishes" we used (Teflon beakers, lids, and plastic pipette tips).
I couldn't put the Teflon containers in a sub-boiling nitric acid bath overnight, but everything else was done to make sure we left the lab as clean as we could.
The column work included a lot of waiting for the solutions to drip through the resin, but by the end of the day, the students and Dr. Sedlacek got the samples back on the hot plate to dry overnight. We did everything we could while we had access to the clean lab, but not having the samples dry properly the night before pushed us back so we weren't able to do a lot of analysis with the mass spectrometer.
Tonight we will finish packing up, go to Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream one more time, and get ready to hit the road by 6:15am. This concludes the daily updates from the BETA team's OSU Trip! Once classes start again, we'll all reflect on our time in Ohio, but until then... thanks for tagging along for the ride- it's been quite the adventure!