Today is what I class as a "shit job" day. Some days are awesome (i.e. tinkering with the UAVs and doing actual science) but other days involve jobs that put the glorious nature of an Antarctic post doc to test.
Todays shit tasks:
1) Take 30 rubber buckets and cut them down to 20cm using one of those buzzy renovator tools. The result after several hours work is a pile of shorter buckets and to be covered in rubber grit. This is actually part of our aeolian (i.e. wind blown) sediment experiment this season. These buckets will be buried in sediment and by using a pair of aluminum plates they can catch pebbles what are rolled around by the wind. From our wind tunnel experiments we know that golfball sized material can be blown around on the surface, so these bucket traps will give us an idea of how much material is rollin' around and from what direction.
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Left to Right took a gizillion dollars, 5 years and a PhD |
Unfortunately due to geology students, one set of sieves was missing as well as the top plate of the auto shaker). This means that I have had to feed 1 kg of material into the machine every 15 minutes to get 250 g of sorted sand out. This obviously has taken a while to get to 4kg of sorted/cleaned sand. Once this is done the sand then needs soaking in ethanol and cooking in an autoclave. This will ensure that none of our Kiwi microbes (and fungi) will get into the dry valleys.
FYI the sand is actually used in an logging infiltrometer that we are experimenting with this year. It basically times how long a known amount of water can be absorbed into a patch of soil. The denser the soil is, the slower the water will take to "infiltrate". We are using it to test the changes in density between sediments that have been trampled on (i.e. by people) to those that are untouched.
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