Homework 7/31

Pre-washing your sample:

• Make sure balance is level
• Weigh the beaker to find the weight before you put the sample in
• Start to fill in the chart with all important information (Ex: Date, beaker #, weight of beaker, sample number)
• Put sediment in beaker but leave a thumb sized amount in the bag in case other researchers need to use it later
• Use bag sealer to reseal the bag
• Weigh sample in the beaker
• Finish filling in the previously mentioned chart with the weight of the sample in the beaker

Bottling your sample:

• Prep 2 glass sample vials.
• Label each with sample ID and size fraction ?(i.e. >63 um) on the side of the vial
• Put ID on lid
• Label one vial "F" (for faunel testing) with dot label
• Label other vial "I" (isotope testing) with dot label
• Check to see if the balance is level (bubble at the back should be centered)
• Check to see if the splitter and brushes you're going to use are clean
• If not clean, remove any debris with brush
• Weigh a clean copper transfer boat and record the mass
• Carefully transfer the sample from the filter paper into clean copper transfer boat
• Weigh the mass of a sample from the lab balance
• Record "dry weight" in the lab binder and in excel spreadsheet
• Split the dry sample using the splitter and put one section into vial "F" and the other section in vial "I"
• Store vials in a labelled box
• Clean off splitter and brushes between sample, every few samples compressed air in the wet lab can be used to ensure the splitter is completely clean

Results:

Larger forams have a larger percent of pore area. Our sub-tropical data may have been altered because we only had 2 sets of data from there as opposed to 3 like the tropical and sub-polar samples.

Discussion:

We've learned a lot from our research. For example, forams there are many different species of forams and depending on where they live, they may have different structures and react to temperature differently. Forams that live in tropical climates may have larger pores than ones that live in sub-polar regions because they may be larger and can move more gas around. Forams from tropical regions also seem to have thicker walls than forams from sub-polar regions.