Trouble-Shooting
Suggestions
This page contains some suggestions
for those interested in performing our experiment, as well as ways that our
experiment could be improved.
- Check
for rocks, tree roots and other hard objects in the soil before deciding to
test in the area. Since you need to take two samples that are very
close together at a time (see procedure), if you take the first sample in a
rocky area it is difficult to find a place to take the second sample where
there are no rocks.
- Dress
appropriately when collecting core samples. We recommend wearing jeans
or heavy sweatpants, a long sleeve shirt and sturdy shoes. You will
find that there is a fair amount of work involved in collecting the samples,
and it can be dirty and uncomfortable if you are not equipped with the
proper attire.
- Plan
out all aspects of the experiment before you begin. You need to have
all steps of the experiment in mind before you begin the first one, because
certain steps must be performed before others. Be sure to calculate
how much water you must use when watering the plots before you go out to
water them. When we performed the experiment we almost watered the
plots with a random amount of water, which would have ruined the entire
experiment.
- Since
the experiment involves many different samples which all look the same, be
sure to label all test tubes, petrifilm© plates, plastic bags and soil
extracts ahead of time so as not to confuse them with one and other.
- It
is vital that no samples become contaminated with outside substances. To
prevent contamination:
- Always
wear gloves when working with samples
- Clean
all materials before using them on different soil samples
- Keep
all bottles and test tubes closed until you actually need to use them
- It
is important to collect as many soil samples as possible for the success of
the experiment. Since collecting and testing soil samples is time
consuming, efficiency is vital. To save time:
- Use
a separate transfer pipet for each soil extract so that they don’t
need to be washed in between tests
- Use
a trowel to break up the dirt so that water poured on will soak in
faster
We only had time to collect 5 sets of samples, but the
experiment would be better if we were able to do more repetitions and
replications
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