Casie UR- The Talk Of The Park

This week I stated my copper experiment. I drove down to Blue Springs Sate Park and visited the St. Johns river. I was very excited to pick through the plethora of Water Hyacinths found there. I was armed with a 5 gallon bucket and my field notebook. I could tell that more Water Hyacinths had grown since my last visit as they were very easy to spot. I waded through the plants (half expecting an alligator to jump up out of no where) where I sunk knee deep into muck. As I was picking the weeds a boat tour was slowly creeping by and the tour guide stated talking about me to his guests. He explained to them what the Water Hyacinth is and how they have a negative effect on the local ecosystem. It was very unexpected and flattering, so I waved 'hi' to the people on the boat and when it docked some of them even came over to ask me more about my project! It was an amazing feeling.
On Tuesday Dr. Woodall and I stared filling the tanks with distilled water (4 liters)  and adding 3 plants to 3 out of the 6 tanks. Unfortunately we did not have the plant food or copper until Thursday so today I went into the lab and added the key ingredient. I put  approximately 0.02 mL/g of copper sulfate to all 6 tanks and then added plant food to them as well. Dr. Woodall and I will be monitoring
 the tanks for 1 week from today. I will make sure that the water level stays consistent through out the week and we will find out next Thursday what the results yield.