Despite the background check obstacle, I shadowed Ms. Mackenzie today instead of Lisa. I started off the day putting stickers on cups for storm water samples, then I proceeded to cutting off stickers from 200+ filters so they could be recycled. I also watched her make the buffer solutions and other reagents for one of the machines.
The rest of the day I worked with her and tested for NH3 in various water samples. Each sample took around 90 seconds to process and there were ~120 samples to do. The samples are put into little glass jars and a probe comes to extract some of the water. The water then goes through a bunch of tubes and the NH3 is measured at a wavelength of 660 nm (absorption test). My job was to write down how many micrograms/L of NH3 were in each sample. She taught me how to work the program (AACE and QuAAtro) and had me input titles for some of the samples.
Going along with my other post, I found out that Ms. Mackenzie also has a favorite type of pen (staples postscript .7 mm).
Image 1: NH3 Machine
Image 2: Computer & lab sheet
Image 3: My pile of stickers and filters
