Day 28

Today we didn't have a morning meeting. While all of the other interns meet in the auditorium me and my lab partner met with Chris right away at 9 to go over all of our slides and finish was we could before we had to be down there at 10:30. We manage to get 2 trials done when going over our presentation and fixing some things. Once we did our trial run we got a lot of questions and corrections/things we should get rid of/add to our presentation from Joe. After the dry run we went to lunch and then came back and worked on our presentation the rest of the day. 

Day 27

Fun fact about today... It is my 17th birthday. Today during the morning meeting we went over everything we needed to know about tomorrows dry run of everyone's presentations. My lab partner is not here today. Once I got to my lab, I straight away began working on my presentation so it would be ready for tomorrows dry run. Me and Chris worked on the presentation
basically all day. We had to put all of the data that me and my lab partner collected from our image analysis and sieving through a python code to get our automated image analysis data and also so

Clay and Silt Graph

we could created graphs with all the data from the different methods into one. During lunch today, the other interns surprised me with pizza and drinks for lunch for my birthday which I thought was very cool. What wasn't cool is that I didn't know so i already had lunch with my mom, which was funny. After lunch me and Chris finished the graphs and put them all into the presentations we began on shortening the number of slides and also the word content for each of the slides. For a bunch of the slides we got rid of all the words and inserted pictures instead. Today we also went over some of the descriptions that had to be said with each slide. Tomorrow is the dry run and we don't have everything ready yet but its close. 

Day 26

This morning we finally had a morning meeting after not having one for a week. After the meeting me and my lab partner came back to our lab and I began working on weighing each individual tin of sample from our 5 samples that we completed last Friday. While i was doing this my lab partner began running the last gravel trial we had to do and once that was done we put it in the oven to be weighed out tomorrow.  Today we also put all of the data from the wet sieving into graphs to be put into our presentation. In the afternoon, Chris went over the presentation with us and which slides we had to present each. Tomorrow my lab partner won't be there so Chris said that me and him would work all day on the presentation by reformatting it and added some more pictures and graphs, plus changing some other things around. 

Day 25

So today we didn't have another morning meeting because Joe emailed us saying that he wouldn't be in because he was on vacation. When me and my partner got there we both got straight to work on the wet sieving trials. Today we completed all 3 clay and silt trials. For lunch my advisor Chris took me and my lab partner out to lunch because of al the hard work we had been doing and how late we have been staying. Today after lunch I also measured all of the sand from each of the tins after all of the samples dried in the oven overnight. After the clay and silt trials were done we started the gravel trials and got 2 trials done with one more left to get done on Monday. All the trials went in the oven and were left to dry over the weekend. 

Day 24

Today once again we didn't have a morning meeting. Today me, my lab partner and Chris made the wet sieving machine and we tested it for leaks. When we tested it for leaks we saw that we needed to shorten the tubing because the water wasn't reaching all of the tubing and it was bending too much. After we shortened the tubing it was ready to start the first trial for sand. We had a couple problems with this machine and everything we needed to do with it. We ended up having to put the sieves in a big bag in the machine because the glue that we needed for the tubing to stay connected to the sieve was actually water soluble and that caused leaks after the 2nd time we ran it. After that problem was solved we got started on the first trial. We finished all of the sand trials today. We need to finish the clay and silt trials and also the gravel trials hopefully before we leave for the weekend but if we don't we need everything done by Monday afternoon. 

Day 23

Today my day started with working on our presentation. Me and my lab partner had a meeting with Joe and we went over what we needed to do to fix/elevate our presentation. He gave us a good amount of corrections and said that we needed to shorten our

presentation overall because there was just too many slides. After we finished that meeting he said that he wanted to meet with us again today when we saw Chris next because he wanted to explain to Chris what he told us so that he would also have a better explanation of the presentation outline. After that meeting was done, me and my lab partner came back to our lab and began working on editing and fixing out presentation overall. For example

I had to remake the graph for the first trial for gravel because we wanted to put that in instead of the chart of data. After I finished remaking that chart and working on a couple other of the slides, Chris came in and we started to assemble the wet sieving machine. We needed to drill holes into the sides of one sieve (we are using an aluminum sieve we are using instead). We are hoping going to began and finish the wet sieving tomorrow or maybe Friday. 

Day 22

Today I came in and we had no morning meeting because this week a lot of the interns were gonna be absent in the mornings. My lab partner is not here today so I don't really have a lot of work to do today. Yesterday my lab partner worked on the presentation while I was not there and she told me to

fix the graphs I made. This morning I did that by adding in axes titles and making sure to export them before putting them in the presentation. I also went into the presentation and adding pictures of different road conditions to show images of the

trafficability/stability of a surface (The slide could be edited that is not the final slide for sure yet). After I worked on remaking some of the charts for the gravel soil samples, I started looking at the materials I got to make the wet sieving machine because I have to get that started and finished all this week and have it in the presentation and ready by next week. So over the next couple of days I will be spending it doing all 9 of the wet sieving trials and completing the graphs and analysis on the data I collect. I also worked on trying to get the automated image analysis to work in python.