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Week Three!

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      I was able to finalize my experimental set up with Josh this week. I was able to figure out a system to keep my anode and cathode at an appropriate distance for the electrocoagulation to take place! Success!      I was also able to create a .05M sodium phosphate electrolyte solution that I will use as a control along with the voltage, 15v, that will help to keep the integrity of my results. These were some major questions I had to answer as these both could have a major impact on the results     My next task is to decide which type of plastics I will be using to start my experimental trials. Once that is decided I will start getting some trials going and get the much coveted data!
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Fall: Week 2!

 Hello all,      This week I met with Josh and the last part needed for my experimental design was ordered! It should be here next week and I can start to figure out my experimental set up. Other than that, I am really waiting for the part before I can continue.  School this semester is a little more intense than I was expecting but it is good to have a challenge, none-the-less. I will be establishing a good working schedule to make sure my TRAIN hours are completed and more importantly so that I can run my experiment with different independent variables to hopefully get a clear picture of how electrocoagulation can be used to remove microplastics. 
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Fall: Week 1!

 Hello Everyone! I am excited to be back at it this fall here at Phoenix College. This semester I will be focusing on electrocoagulation of water for the removal of microplastics. While this is a very exciting field of research, it comes with a lot of different question that I hopefully will be able to answer this semester.  Some questions I am looking to find answers to are as follows: 1) Does electrocoagulation work for removing microplastics? 2) What is the optimal volt and current needed for electrocoagulation to work? 3) What impact does differing pH and electrolyte concentrations have on the effectiveness of electrocoagulation?  These are a few of the guiding questions I am excited to look at for this upcoming semester! I will meet with Josh about one more possible part I might need before I begin. Here we go!
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Week 14!

      What a great way to end the semester for TRAIN! The presentations today were absolutely amazing to have the opportunity to hear what everyone has been working on this semester. In addition to that I always love an opportunity to share what my experience has been like and feel so energized to continue on with this work after having the opportunity to share. This semester has been one full of learning experiences and will be invaluable moving forward in my scientific career.  I would like to thank everyone for the opportunities and for taking the time to pour into me as a student and scientist. Thank you to Josh, Dr. Chapman, and Dr. Cotter. I'm so excited to continue on with research and have so many ambitions when it comes to TRAIN in the near future!
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Week 13!

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      Time flies and here we are at the end of the semester! My days have been filled with quite a lot between classes, work, and TRAIN. I have however had the chance to work more on the final details of my paper and fix some things on my poster after the AZ NV Academy of Science presentations. In addition to this I have been working on future steps as I would like to continue on this experimental process with microplastics in some new directions starting in the fall. The nice thing is I have an internship this summer that looks at aspects of the microplastics as well. So I am hoping that can continue by aiding my experimental design and process.      I am excited to be able to take a trip to ASU tomorrow to be given a tour of a lab over there from one of Dr. Cotter's old students who is now a grad student at ASU. In addition I am also excited to see everyone's finish presentations in the next couple weeks! I am wishing you all the best!
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Week 11!

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      Oh my goodness, my business is at an apex, or I hope at least. The 21 credits I am enrolled in this semester decided to get feisty all around the same time so I have been in battle mode to say the least. It's been a good experience in that it has helped me to decide to turn the credit dial down next semester.      This week has been defined by a few things for TRAIN. The first is the poster presentation this Saturday for the Arizona Nevada Academy of Science annual meeting. That has translated into a lot of practice sessions and going over the poster we had printed this last week. I am very excited for the opportunity and the judging brings a level of anxiety, in the best way possible. In addition to that I continued to work on my rough draft for my research paper. Its always fun, and slightly tedious, to go back through and translate all of the notes and different aspects of research to one paper. I have enjoyed it though as it is such an important a...
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Week 10!

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      It has been a very busy week in light of the upcoming Arizona Nevada Academy of Science annual meeting next week. I was able to complete the poster with some other team members and am very excited for the opportunity to be able to present. That took up a lot of my time over the last week.      In addition to working on my poster I had a decent load of lab work that I needed to take care of. We had some issues with some experimental controls and the team decided to redo samples and filtrations of water samples from the five stages collected earlier in the semester. That translated to a couple of late lab evenings where I ran 400ml through a vacuum filtration process. After which I allowed them to dry for 24 hours and dyed them with Nile Red. The team and I will be counting those filters tomorrow and I am excited to see how the counts go.       Finally, I have been quite busy this week with school stuff as well. It feels like that ti...
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