Day 3

Everyday of the internship will start off with a meeting at 8:45. Today we discussed what we needed to put into our abstracts that are due on Monday. Instead of doing a normal abstract we were instructed to make a problem statement. After the morning meeting we went to our labs and started working on what we needed to for the day. I went to my lab and finished reading the 3 articles I needed to find on the methods of sieving and grain size distribution. After finishing reading the 3 articles at noon a couple of the interns, including myself, went to a seminar where Robert Kremens talked about the history of food production and agriculture. I found the seminar very interesting to hear the history behind food and after that the open topics involving food and how it grew through the years of man. Something I found the most interesting was the change of man being hunters and gathers, to man becoming farmers (as shown in the image below). After the seminar and lunch I came back to my lab and started working on the problem statement that is due Monday. We figured out that the main problem involving this working involves comparing wet sieving methods to image analysis  to find the grain size distribution of soil, sand, gravel, clay, etc. The work we are doing is involved in a project that is sponsored by the navy and other government organizations.  In some cases areas of ground could be unstable and finding the grain size distribution of land helps people like, for example, soldiers be aware of areas they could sink into. My lab group is going to go over our problem statements on Friday afternoon to do some proof reading.