Chemistry Mystery

For my chemistry lab class, we had both a written and a practical exam. For the practical exam, we were given a salt which we then had to dissolve in a few different solvent and perform experiments to identify the anion and the cation in the salt we had been given. Mine dissolved in all of the solvents (ammonia, hydrochloric acid, water, and bleach), indicating that I might have potassium as my cation, as potassium is an alkali metal and dissolves in most anything. I then performed a flame test, burning some of my salt, and had a brilliant violet flame, confirming potassium!
After that, I went through a number of experiments to try to figure out the anion. I was able to rule out a number of things since it had dissolved in everything but not bubbled out at the beginning-- for example carbonate bubbles out just like soda carbonation when placed in acid. After adding a number of different chemicals, I identified the anion as sulfate, and got a beautiful dandelion yellow solution at the end. It was such a fun lab! It made me feel like a mad scientist as I combined lots of different solutions to look for specific orders of color changes.

Hesperophylax occidentalis

For my animal diversity class, you may recall that I needed to get an invertebrate from the Provo River. The reason I needed to do that was for an assignment to identify an invertebrate down to the species. I got a caddis fly, a remarkable insect that in its larval stage constructs a shell for itself out of the materials at the bottom of rivers (sand, plant matter, etc)

The only thing we were allowed to assume was that the specimen was an animal (multicellular motile heterotroph). After that we needed to use scholarly dichotomous keys to identify it further. (I did it out of order though, since I assumed it was from the subclass Insecta and started there). Even though I knew it was from the caddisfly order (Trichoptera), I started there to get used to using dichotomous keys. Getting down to caddisfly, wasn't too hard, but to find the family it belonged to, we needed a microscope.

Entomologists use special microscopes that are really cool! you can zoom in on the image itself, once it's focused, which means you never have to change the lens on the microscope or refocus it. The instruments are special for looking at things about this size, and so they were perfect for examining the caddisfly.

It was actually really difficult to narrow it down to the family of caddisfly. There was lots of specific vocabulary to describe the different types, and I needed to learn a lot of terms (mesanotum, setae, etc). It took me almost 3 hours to find the family! It was from Lemniphilidae.

After that, I found the genus to be Hesperophylax. Surprisingly, finding the genus was much easier and faster than the family, and the synapomorphies were much more clearly visible. The species I had to guess on between two options since there's no way to distinguish them in their larval state, but based on population sizes in Utah, I can pretty confidently say it was most likely occidentalis. So overall the classification of the caddisfly was:
Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Hexapoda, Subclass Insecta, Order Trichoptera, Family Lemniphilidae, Genus Hesperophylax, Species occidentalis
The assignment was difficult and time consuming but it was rewarding to eventually find the species, and to know why it was that, as well as to have the joy of discovery as I went along. I was really ready to be done with fly larvae afterwards though!

Animal Diversity

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Animal Diversity. Not surprisingly, I LOVE this class! It's so fascinating! One of the coolest parts about it has been how much attention we've given to invertebrates. When I started the class, I realized we would spend the majority of the class studying invertebrates, and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. But it's actually so interesting! It's really helped me feel a lot more wonder about all the animals in the world, from sponges to jellyfish, from blue whales to flatworms. Animals that seemed so simple before have been surprisingly complex, like earthworms-- I always used to think of earthworms as being "barely" animals, but they actually have complex organs, a brain, eyes, jaws, and make themselves burrows which they return to daily. 

It's also been really fun to do dissections every week. My lab partner and I have gotten to be really good friends, and we have had fun getting more used to using the instruments and learning a ton about each animal phylum that we've studied. We started with the most basic, Sponges (Porifera), which lack true tissues, symmetry, or any ability to move, and have slowly moved up through the phyla, advancing in complexity through Cnidarians (Jellyfish, sea anemones, corals), Platyhelminthes (Flatworms, tape worms and flukes), Annelids (Earthworms, sea worms, sand worms), Nematoda (Roundworms -- the ones Alicia did lots of work on), Molluscs (Clams, snails, squids, octopi) and now we're working on Arthropods (Spiders, insects, millipedes). Some fun facts I've learned about these animals:

Nematodes are the most abundant type of animal on earth. Of all individual animals (not species, individuals), 80% are nematodes.

Platyhelminthes have extremely complex life cycles-- usually three or more hosts (they're almost all parasitic), and as many as eight different forms and life stages.

All Cnidarians are stinging-- the reason sea anemones feel kinda sticky when you touch them is because they've shot off hundreds of microscopic "harpoons" that are all sticking on the outside of your skin with "strings" still attached to the organism (they're not strong enough to get through human skin and actually hurt you)

Spiders lost their sensory organs (antennae), but many of them use the front pair of their legs as antennae most of the time and walk on only six legs.

The largest arthropod that ever lived was some 13 ft long (It was a giant swimming scorpion)

Our closest relatives as chordates are sea urchins and starfish.

Arthropods are the most species diverse group-- about a quarter of all known animal species are beetles.

There's a wasp that's about the same size as a single celled paramecium-- and it's not even the smallest insect in the world.

Live the Riv

Going back to school was exciting, but it was sad to end my 8 month hiatus. Surprisingly, the plane was mostly empty, and I had all the room I could want.

I am living at the Riviera Apartments now! I love my little home, but I'm also excited to be moving to the Brittany apartments in May. One of the best parts of the Riviera is being next door to Swig, a gourmet soda place. 

Dental days

While I was in Albuquerque, I got to shadow a number of dentists. It's been fun as I've expanded the number of practices I've visited to see how the atmospheres differ, and how each dentist interacts with their patients and their staff.
I spent a couple of days in a general dentist's office, and really liked what I saw. General dentistry does look like a lot of fun since there's such a wide variety of different things you can do, and you get to build patient relationships a little more than you might in a specialist setting.
I also went to an endodontist's office. Endodontists are specialists in root canals and apicos (a procedure that tries to repair a failed root canal) primarily, though they also perform some procedures that deal with tooth development and regeneration. Since the only procedure they do, for the most part, is root canals, with the occasional apico, I thought it would be really boring. But I actually really enjoyed it! It was fun watching the doctor work, especially because everything is on such a minute scale (clearing out nerve channels on teeth is really precise work!). There were cool microscopes and cameras that the doctor looked through as they worked, which was quite different from, say, oral surgery, which is what I have the most exposure with.
And, best of all, I got to meet the zoo dentist! I went to his office, and he was really friendly and gave me a lot of advice about dental school, getting ready for applications, and choosing where to apply. He was also an older dentist, and it was good to get his perspective on dentistry since most of the dentists I've met have been relatively young. He told me that he's been volunteering as the zoo dentist for decades. His first animal patient was an otter. He took me to a back room where he had pictures up of him doing root canals on a polar bear, a jaguar and giving a filling to a mountain lion, and he had a hand print in paint from a gorilla he'd done some work on as well. It was so cool!

Ice Castles

On New Year's Eve we went to the Ice Castles in Midway! They were super fun, and it felt like I was walking through Frozen or something from the Chronicles of Narnia. 

We had watched some music videos filmed at the ice castles in previous years, and the videos actually made it look much smaller than it really was. There was plenty of space and a variety of fun areas in the castle.

There were lights that changed color constantly giving an otherworldly glow to the ice. The fountains were cool since steam would billow up out of the center of them, while all around was caked in ice.

Arches

On our way up to Utah for Christmas, we went to Arches. It was really fun, especially because we seemed to be the only ones there. It started snowing which gave the place a very different feel than usual. We had fun driving around and seeing some of the rocks. 

The best was all the extra cairns people had made.

I really liked seeing the park without so many people; it made it much easier to get the pictures we wanted.