Michelle LaComb: Sediment Sieving and Hydrophone

Last week when I collected my sediment samples, I attempted to dry them in my oven. Unfortunately, they still were too wet to sieve in class so I plopped them onto a piece of foil and stuck them in the oven in the classroom where they remained until Tuesday.

On Tuesday I came in and retrieved my sediment from the oven and performed my sieve test. While in the oven, my sediment had gotten hard and clumped together so I first used a mortar and pestle to break it up a bit.  

After my sediment was broken up, I measured out 200mL from my control and weighed it. I then put it in the sieve and shook it for about one minute. After the shaking process was done I weighed both the smaller grains and the larger grains and then repeated the entire process with my other sediment sample. I found that both of my samples contained a fairly even mixture of large and small grain sizes. 

After being sieved.

Breaking up the sediment.

Weighing the sediment.

While I was in the classroom on Tuesday I also sat down with Dr. Woodall and she showed me how to record sounds on my computer using the hydrophone. With this new found knowledge I went down to a pond on Wednesday and attempted to practice recording sounds to get the hang of using the hydrophone in water. I didn't get much done however because my research partner kept trying to feast upon every human and animal that happened to wander by. Looks like I'll have to fly solo next time if I plan on accomplishing anything!  

My cute, but very unhelpful, research assistant checking out the water!