Wishful Thinking about Past Research

This year, I started with next to no prior experience in the field of research. I have made incredible progress in learning how to perform research, but now I can't help but wonder what I could've done better or different. It took me a while to understand how and when to use a lab notebook, which caused me immense delays. I had problems with time management, because I hadn't figured out how much effort I had to put in to various tasks. Probably the worst of all, I didn't know how to talk to experienced researchers. If I had known how to talk to a professional researcher, I could have shaved months off my project, but I was too nervous to initiate conversation. All these things would have made my life easier and my research better, but I guess I will just have to keep moving forward. After all, the stress of research were what made my progress so rapid.

The Science Fair Scramble

Well, it has been a while since I made a post, but I have been productive in science fairs. In a regional science fair, I ended up receiving 3 first place awards, so I felt rather confident as to my future success. It was too soon, however, as the next fair ended with not even an honorable mention. From the successes and failures of my science fair experiences, I have learned how to perform my research much better. Ever since my first science fair this year, I gained criticism after criticism, but they always just gave me a place to expand. I added on more stages to my research after I was told that I should keep progressing, but I also added more statistics when I was told that my data was insufficient. All the failure has spawned success, so I can't feel too bad about the science fairs no matter what I had.

PJAS Preparation

It's the middle of the average school year and most researchers have spent their time well, having spaced out their work in ways sufficient to have produced results. I am not one of those researchers. To prepare for the PJAS science fair, I have made a presentation that is being revised at the moment. There is but one problem: data. I have not reached the end of my experiment as of yet, with days of work left to be done before I will be, but I am running out of time. The deadline for me to turn in my presentation to PJAS is in about 10 days. That is more or less a frightening prospect for me, but I am going to be trying my best to get some results before then. That means I must work everyday, not to mention cutting corners. It won't be pretty or remotely ideal, but it will get the job done. It only makes me wish that I knew what I was getting myself into before I decided that this was not priority one. Maybe then I would have more time to work on this experiment. Sorry for this blog post being a little sloppy, but I am trying to prevent any of my classes from falling behind because I'm only focusing on one subject. Wish me luck, and I'll update when I can.

Status: Ecstatic but Enervated

Batch 2 undergoing pretreatment.
The Phragmites has a darker color than the
Bamboo, both in liquid and solid content.

My research could be going worse. I have very little to show as of yet for my first batch, but I have started a second batch for more data.

The second batch consists of six falconer tubes: 3 for Phragmites and 3 for Bamboo. Each sample consists of ground up stem/shoot material from either plant in a quantity of 1 gram with 25 mL of water.

I started the pretreatment phase last week and decided to take my time in it. This turned out to be a good idea, as I'm already getting promising data. My biggest success was finding information that points towards my present hypothesis to be correct. The hypothesis is that the structural strength of a plant will be affected by cellulose proportionally. I will try to prove this by showing that Bamboo should be better than Phragmites because it is a stronger plant, so it should have more structural fibers that can be enzymatically hydrolyzed.

In contrast to the initial success of promising results, I am getting close to my first science fair, not to mention my midterms, and I have little in quantity that can be presented. I hoped to have been able to set up my first batch to distill, but that hasn't worked out thus far. I'm being pressed for time by the science fair and feel the pressure already. I hope that I can get enough information to be able to present this Friday for my peers.

The big question at this point is whether or not I will be able to make ends meet and have a full presentation ready by the end of this week. I think I will be able to make it work with glucose measurements, but I'm not sure. Either way, big things are coming this way, so I need to be prepared.

Nearly Time to Collect Data

As the first phase of my experiment is almost done, I have needed to think about the kind of data I need to collect. At the moment, I've been collecting ethanol and glucose tests for a little bit to identify the stage of the processes going on. In the future though, I will need to collect data on energy potential, which is a lot more complicated than what I've done thus far. To identify energy potential, I will need to combust my test samples under water and track the temperature rise with some kind of instrument. From the temperature rise, I can determine what the energy content of my test sample is. All in all, not that complicated when described in this fashion, but it requires me to perform mathematics endemic to thermodynamics. In other words, I have no experience with what I will be trying to test. As I am currently sick with a head cold, I will be posting this on Saturday instead of Sunday like I usually do.

Research Update

A beaker of water forms a hot water bath for my samples during enzymatic hydrolysis.

These last few weeks I have been preparing to perform my experiment and then actually going through with it.

Thus far, I have been highly successful in performing measurements to keep track of the sample's progress. The only negative aspect of these measurements is that I run through my digital glucose strips ridiculously fast.

While some times have been successful, I have not been lucky in the time aspect. The process of making Cellulosic Ethanol has taken days of constant activity to get to this point, but it will be worth the wait.

During this update, you will see the picture of the test samples in the top right, but why is that one sample so darkly colored? This question has boggled my mind. I have ruled out that it was a high glucose concentration, but I still don't know what causes it.

I will finish my first batch of ethanol by Tuesday at the quickest, but I still have a whole other batch to make using Phragmites reed.