Dylan Radford UR, Sharks! ...and dirty water

Hello everyone! Our last class session was very informative and I learned a lot of new material. First we had a speaker come in and talk to us about shark behavior, anatomy, and the tests that the run with these animals. Sharks are awesome so I was pretty hooked from the start but as she got deeper into her lecture I saw that there was a lot more to sharks than I thought. She mainly spoke about the hammer head sharks. I learned that they are the smartest out of all the sharks and they are the most maneuverable. The speaker also talked about their vision. You wouldn't think that hammerhead sharks would be able to see very well because their eyes are located on the sides of their elongated heads. Well I learned that that isn't the case, Hammerhead sharks can see in nearly 360 degrees horizontally and vertically. I am pretty excited that we are going to fish for sharks next week so we can do our measurements and be the first class to conduct an experiment like this. I just hope we catch some sharks!

My Scatter Plot

     The next portion of the lab was not my favorite if you want me to be honest. I enjoyed the procedure of getting my sample and using all of the different equipment that I had never used before but when I put my information in and saw the results I was disappointed because I predicted that there would be a correlation with TSS and Turbidity. It is kind of common sense to me, if you have more suspended solids in your water for example, sand, your turbidity will be higher than someone with less suspended solids in their water. I enjoyed making the graph because scatter plots are awesome when you need to compare multiple different samples. From my graph I was able to tell that there was a positive correlation between the total amount of suspended solids and turbidity. As the TSS increases so does the Turbidity, like I said before. However, I remember having a few errors when doing the experiment. First I didn't transport my sample to DSC in an ice pack to keep it cool. The next error was when I was using the dry vacuum pump and oven, I may have not transported my sample from the vacuum station to the iso-temp oven fast enough. All in all, class was still way more enjoyable than any lecture class and I cant wait for Friday so we can conduct our next experiment in the field!