Day Eight

A little over a week!  I can say that I am staying energized & hopeful;  we have made significant progress on germination. All six pots have healthy sprouting specimens. Out of the 18 seeds planted, 11 have sprouted. 

They are giving us a 61% of total germination.   

The percentile of germination per pot:
Triple germination pots: 17%
Double germination pots: 50%
Single germination pots: 33%
 

The baby tomato plants ranged in height from 1/2inch to 2 1/2 inches. The far left pots seem to do the best as far as placement. The far-right pots seemed to do the poorest. Localized germination variability could have resulted from a difference in captured local humidity, inconstant fluorescence, or even airflow variations. Any of these could have contributed to one side doing well and one side doing poorly (given averages)

Josh and I ran through another series of ideas today about the soundproof environment, looking at larger modules that I want to insulate myself with custom-cut soundproofing materials. After visualization the potential setup, we might need to simplify the inside of these large "coolers/incubators" to reduce the chance of noise reverberation. There might be a possibility of using an out-of-commission unit in the F building; we are looking more into this in the coming weeks.  

I felt a sense of determination and confidence wash over me when I saw the plants doing well, and I could not wait for the next phase, even though planning and rehearsal are critical to this following process. Also, something else I am currently familiarizing myself with is the echo-location software and its applied practice. It's been pretty perfect playing with it at night, which works pretty well since my daytime hours seem almost all spoken for! Having 12 credit hours + work + internship (and now possibly robots club!) has me exercising a sense of time management I didn't even know I possessed (haha). I've also started to do yoga these last 2 weeks, and it honestly seems to be helping me stay mentally organized and calm during more demanding moments.  

I couldn't be more ready for fall, but as an Arizona native, there is something pretty magical about the summers here. It's such an extreme biosphere, and I look forward to the day when ill be able to work with desert plants and animals or a related field.
 

Week highlight: Seeing all 6 plants germinating!

Alex Shaw