Blog Assignment #10: Research Project Reflection

The most interesting thing about my research experience would be that the scientific process is all about revision. In our research project we had to constantly revise our original plan/proposal. A difficulty of the research project was that some of our data couldn't be used in our final poster, such as the nutrient test. Another difficulty was trying to grow grass quickly and trying to simulate a rain storm. As part of the team something that I thought could have improved was my schedule because of the amount of transportation I had to do between schools, and nearing the end of the quarter I had finals at UW which made it hard to work at the same time outside of class.

I'm proud that we made it to the end, got lots of data, and managed our time productively in lab. We overcame difficulties and provided solutions. At the time, I had forgotten that the pH of one number is ten times the next, for example pH 4 is ten times more acidic than pH 5. So a surprising result of our experiment has how much the grass affected pH level. Something I will remember about BIOL&213 in 5 years is that peer review is a very helpful throughout the process because others can suggest improvements and see errors in your experiment that you couldn't see or hadn't thought about yourself.