He Sees You When You're Sleeping ...

Several of you have expressed interest in the webcamera that I have mounted in the lab. As I have said, there was a time when I was concerned because I was alone in the lab with the students and would have appreciated a second set of eyes and an impartial account of what happened and when in the lab. So here we are. These are the images from the Intro Chem Lab 23 November:



And the Organic Chem Lab 25 November:

A River Runs Through It

So we are in the middle of the biggest storm of the season and I decided to make a quick visit to the culvert (click on image for video).

From 2010-11-07(stream)

The video isn't perfect (I see I forgot to reset the date in the camera when I changed the batteries)but it shows the culvert releasing water at 3 meters per second and pooling over the lower rock field which clearly was created without thinking about the water table. The lower rock field will not act as a filter, the landscape fabric hoarding has been torn out and is now not holding anything in. If you look closely you can also see the demarcation line of the muddy outflow as it mixes with the stream. I have to admit though that the dilution factor has to be a significant factor with the stream volume so high.

I think this confirms pretty much everything I suspected and feared. Now we just need to wait until the city starts salting the streets to see what impact that has on the stream. Something tells me the stream doesn't freeze over this winter.

From 2010-11-07(stream)

From 2010-11-07(stream)

From 2010-11-07(stream)

Calm Before the Whirlwind

It is weirdly quiet and calm here at CU. Sort of that ominous quiet before a big storm. I have been working on my courses for the fall and attending meetings. Oh, this morning I ran into this little fellow on the sidewalk in front of CU.


When informed that he would likely be stepped on he bobbed his head with a sense of resignation (echos of a behaviour observed by a student blogger who had the blog "ChemSucks"). In spite of his fatalism I helped him into a nice shaded bit of dewy grass where I like to think he cavorts and gambols in a salamandery way.

I liked this recent cartoon ...

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

So, we had a significant precipitation event and I decided to make the Friday circuit to check the stream. It turns out the flow was much higher and had turned the water a light brown. This is what it looked like on Thursday before the rain ...


And on Friday morning after the rain the same section of the stream looked like this (and according to measurements was flowing twice as fast and was twice as deep.)

I made the trip up to the upstream site and the culvert. I did not meet up with any animals this time but I did notice some changes.

The hay bale containment barrier is new and there seems to be a bit of a design flaw in the landscaping since it would appear that the local terrain is draining to the side of the storm sewer rock pit. To my eyes it would appear that the rock pit goes too low and has a conflict with the local water table. There seems to have been some work done on the rock pit as well with the part just below the outfall made of larger stones ending in a meter high rock pile that is followed by a flatter rock field made of smaller rocks down to the stream edge ending in a landscaping fabric hoarding. I think we are going to see the stream back fill into the swampy area and create a pond or stagnant overflow catchment upstream to the rock field. Maybe.

On a different note we have had a game camera sitting in the lab for some time now and I decided to unpack the camera and field test it before the semester starts. I set it up tied to a tree at site 3 just downstream from the culvert. This is where I have run into the mist wildlife but over the three days it was set up it mostly took pictures of me measuring the stream and two dudes with dogs. There is one very faint image made at two in the morning that might be a raccoon but it was not the parade of wildlife that I expected. Oh well.

Science in Cartoons

Curiosity, Childhood and the Scientific Method
(click on cartoon to embiggen)

LINK TO COMIC

Chemistry 1013 Fall 2010

There were some important changes that have been made in the course over the summer. The most important change would have to be the selection of a new textbook. The text for this course will be one by Mahaffey et al (Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity link to text description).

Why change? Well, the previous text was not fitting the needs of the class (to my eyes). This text is a "full service" text meaning that it is large but comprehensive. This is the first time in a long time that I have used a comprehensive text like this in first year chemistry. I have always thought that the large size of such texts would be intimidating especially to weaker students. My mind was changed however in discussions about texts with colleagues at our recent national chemistry conference in Toronto.

The negative aspects of the size of the text are compensated by the significant supports that come with the text including extensive end of chapter questions at varying levels of difficulty. By far however the greatest advantage is access to the online tutor and assignment facility called OWL (link to resource).

The text is about $ 20 more expensive than the previous text but the deciding factor in switching to this specific text is that it incorporates the entire text that I use for the second year organic chemistry course (link to previous organic text). Now this text has a suggested retail price of $ 180 which is more than the first year text that I have chosen so if I can use the Mahaffey text for all three courses (Chem 1013, Chem 1023 and Chem 2113) the students will save a lot of money.

They will have to lug around a large text though and the students that have taken chemistry using the previous text will have to make a pretty dramatic transition from the two texts.

So if you are a first year student or a returning student you will be learning chemistry from the same textbook. I am told that the texts will be available in the bookstore by the middle of August. I will let you know when they are in.

Science in Cartoons

Inform the Rebel Alliance that the Death Culvert is Fully Operational

So it was time to make a trip to the North-West Branch of Hall's Creek again. I got the equipment together and headed out (notice how I rock out the clip-on sunglasses).



The residence site is a nice setting where the stream is forced to make a sharp turn at the base of a low sandstone cliff where I set up the equipment.

So, I had just calibrated the dissolved oxygen probe and was starting data acquisition (the instructions say that once the data starts collection the probe must be held still) I got that old "someone is watching" feeling. I looked around and saw this little guy.


Do you see him? Look closer ...


This little guy is about two meters away from me and clearly lives in the root tangle exposed by stream erosion. Over the five minutes he pokes his head out of every hole in the root ball chirping at me and I swear one time he threw a rock at me. Once I had my data I was able to take his picture but the motion spooked him and he ran downstream. And once again field collection of data is interrupted by an outbreak of biology.

I collected data at the upstream site and weirdly met a much larger version of the same critter living in a bank overhang just downstream of where I met the rabbit and the dogs. I could not get a picture of this guy 'cause he was really ticked at me and kept running around. In any event we have resident fauna close to the campus.

I made the upstream pilgrimage to the new storm sewer. I could see from the discoloration of the rocks in the drainage basin that a significant pool had formed between the drain and the stream.


That could only mean that in the last storm the sewer had released a significant discharge. I could see that even now, days afterwards, that the drain was still discharging and when I collected some of the fluid I noticed that it was very foul.

So the drain is operational and the stream has begun to change. It is amazing how things come out of no where to change things. Challenge or opportunity? I don't know. Anyway, this is what the stream looked like today.

The Watcher in the Woods

So I am back in the woods doing more stream measurements. At this point I have been in the woods over two hours on one of the hottest days of the summer (air temp in shade 26 C). The three applications of insect repellant were wearing off and horseflies the size of hummingbirds were ripping small chunks of any exposed skin. I was hunkered down by the stream where i met
the dogs two weeks ago initializing the probes. I could not shake the feeling that I was being watched so I looked around and observed that one of rocks on the opposite side of the stream was not, in fact, a rock. This rabbit was sizing me up.

The look he was giving me was more aggravated than anything and I got the definite impression that he was thirsty and if I got in his way he would bunnystomp me. So once again I had animals in my sample area. Weird, what is it about this section of the stream?

Oh yeah, they have completed the storm drain and I wandered down to see the results. The discharge pipe is now cased and the discharge will fall into a stone field before it reaches the stream. Next big rain I need to check to see what kind of flow there from the drain.

Science in Cartoons

Science and Religion, dinosaurs
(click on cartoon to embiggen)

LINK TO CARTOON

Homeopathy, solutions

LINK TO CARTOON

Science and Engineering Morals and Ethics, Science and Professional schools

LINK TO CARTOON

Phfft ...Like I needed a Movie Theatre Drink to Tell Me This

Science in Cartoons

Food Chemistry, Chemistry Urban Legends
(click on cartoon for link and to embiggen)

Biochemistry

(click on cartoon for link and to embiggen)

Probed in the Woods

It has been a long time since I posted anything here mainly because I could see that my experiment was not reaching the pedagogical goals that I had for this exercise. Oddly, something I had not expected was the continuing number of visits that this site gets resulting from searches for honeydew or science cartoons. That said something weird happened in the comments of the last post so I thought I should post something to see if I should close this site down altogether.

So let us speak of sidewalks and their consequences. Our little university is having a major expansion that has resulted in a significant change in our view from the front. As part of the upgrading of the property it would appear that the sidewalk has been extended across the front of our property

What I noticed was that the sidewalk would extend into the woods at the edge of our property. This resulted in the destruction of the oldest tree on our property, a very large and sound oak tree. Progress I guess.

What I then noticed was that the same workmen that had removed the tree were also installing a storm drain that exhausted onto our property. It turns out that the installation of the sidewalks mean that the road no longer drained naturally and needed storm drains but in an amusing twist the municipal sewer system extended only to the university property not past it so the storm drain would have to have a discharge into the local natural waterway.

Well, the local natural waterway would be the North-West Branch of Hall's Creek which runs through the University property and is one of the marvellous natural resources that we have been blessed to have on the campus. Every year I have had classes and laboratories based on the stream with huge positive responses from the students. It is a lovely little stream.

But this new storm drain will discharge into our stream (mostly when it storms of course but the street runoff will go directly into the stream in large volumes now and the run-off in the winter will be heavily laden with salt). So, in a frenzy of concern for the stream, I decided to take a day and measure as much water chemistry as possible for the stream before the discharges begin. So I wander down to the stream near the new drain and set up computers and probes and I am standing in the middle of the stream, water level near the tops of my rubber boots, festooned with probes and wires like some sort of scientific Christmas tree.

I had just touched the master keypad to start data collection when I heard crashing noises in the woods coming in my direction. I swear this is true, a monster sized dog was coming down to the stream dragging a tree (really, a big dead tree with roots and branches). When it saw me in the stream it dropped the tree and struck a pose.

Where I grew up dogs running loose in the woods are never good this dog just stared at me. I avoided eye contact and spoke in a low calm voice. The dog did not move and kept staring at me. I figured that when the searchers found my mangled body a photo of the monster that attacked me might be useful so I carefully removed my camera and took a quick picture.

Then there was this more frantic and crazed crashing in the underbrush and I was just about to drop $ 2000 of scientific equipment in the stream and spend the last twenty seconds of my life re-enacting the more disturbing scenes from the Blair Witch Project when this blur flew past me.

It turned out to be this other dog who promptly dropped into the stream and rolled in it while drinking water. I could tell that there was some kind of family relationship between the two dogs since the larger dog seemed to look at the black and white dog with the some-what disgusted look of an older brother. B and W Dog knew I was there but just wanted to drink and cool - off. Big Dog seemed to want to think this through more but nevertheless came down to the stream to cool off also.

So, now I have two good-natured dogs wallowing in the stream upstream of all my carefully placed probes so without overtopping my boots I carefully got to the master computer pad and turned off the probes just as clouds of silt and rafts of dog slobber floated through my study area.

On the edge of my hearing I heard a woman's voice calling though the woods, a voice that galvanized the dogs and they left as quickly as they could ... straight ... though ... my ... probes and sensors.

I have a complete intact data set, my equipment is fine and none of my internal organs have been ripped out. All in all this is what a Biologist calls a sucessful day in the field.

I am a chemist, what am I doing field Biology for anyway, this stuff never happens in the chemistry lab.