Tag Archives: repeating crumley

RCD: Day 36

This will be the final data point for this experiment. Looks like seeds don’t grow in 99% D2O as Lewis reported, but Crumley argued against.

RCD: Day 28

Still nothing growing and the old sample that had one sprout stopped growing as well, which leads me to believe it started growing a long time ago, possibly while still in the package and not in D2O, and I just never noticed.

RCD: Day 22

It should be noted that the annual spring cooling system maintenance is occurring as I post this. That means that the lab is excurciatingly warm right now and this may negatively impact the seed growth (which shouldn’t happen anyways).

RCD: Day 14

The sample that is much older than the rest still has the one seed sprouting, and it looks like it sprouted a little more than last week. Otherwise there is still no sprouting in any of the other samples.

RC7: D2O Only Setup and Day 0 pics

The setup for this experiment was rather simple:

  • Opened 6 analyslides (see Experiments Products page above)
  • poured at least 30 seeds into each analyslide
  • added 6mL of D2O
  • closed chambers and sealed with corning vacuum grease

I’m going to refer to this experiment as RCD from now on both in titles and in the categories on the side. This will be the second to last Repeating Crumley Experiment I do, for thoroughness sake. The final experiment will be my attempt to do a few samples on moist pads to show that the seeds grew because of phenomenon other than D2O. How I plan to achieve this is another story. Preplan? Preplan…

Now on to the pics:

Since the camera setup for the analyslides will be used for a different experiment (coming soon) I’ll just be taking pictures of the seeds as a lump group (but I’ll have to take better ones than this batch). I’ll also do this every 7 days, but I’ll check more frequently than that in case there is some random sprouting.

Also it is worth noting that one of the samples is actually a sample from the last DDW experiment. It was not recorded for data because D2O had nothing to do with purified regular water, but I used it as a control. That was over a month ago and there are still no sprouts.

Project planning notes via Handrite

Here are some notes I took using handrite for android regarding my project plans. I don’t mean to advertise for anything, but I use this app ALL THE TIME and it is super helpful. Typing on my phone is annoying sometimes and Handrite allows me to use my finger to write (albeit sloppily). These notes were taken yesterday while I was meeting with Steve (on my phone) and now I have time to paste them in my notebook. So here is some background on my ramblings:

  • I would like to effectively analyze the amount of hydrogen-deuterium exchange in my samples. This is a phenomenon I’ve talked about a lot, know very little about, and stress a lot over. We tried FT-IR of water samples to see if we can determine differences in the water types. We’ve had mixed results in this regard. It boils down to the fact, that I don’t trust anything. How do I know that deuterium isn’t sneaking into my unopened bottles of DDW, or that hydrogen isn’t getting into my D2O? What about after it’s been opened? What about in my samples? If I’m going to get reliable results with yeast and e. coli I’ll need to know if I can trust commercial products.
  • NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) seems to be a promising route to try and there may be some equipment either in the Chemistry department or Biomedical Engineering here at UNM that I’ll need to look into.
  • Mass spectrometry may be another avenue to determine precise amounts of deuterium in water.
  • Something not written but that I talked with Steve about yesterday and just remembered is that I need to talk with Sigma to find out how they measure the purity of the DDW and how reliable those measurements are long term. If something sits on a shelf for a year, how do I know it isn’t really just pure natural water?
  • I also have some stuff in my notes about the Repeating Crumley experiment. I just setup a D2O only experiment to show definitively that tobacco seeds do not grow in D2O. Previously I would only track this data for 10-15 days and Crumley went up to a month (if I remember correctly). I’ll write the setup in a minute, but I want to do 30 days so I have some pictures for my open access, self published RC paper (spoiler alert!).
  • Also to show that I’m no slouch, I want to try and repeat Crumley’s original experiment with paper towels to show that the growth of the 100% D2O seeds was due to H-D exchange and other environmental factors and not because they eventually grow in D2O. Yea I’m a badass.
  • The rest of the notes are some ramblings that are not really private but thoughts I would prefer not to elaborate on now.

Tata for now!

RCW: Day 11

I forgot to take Day 10 pictures yesterday so I’m making up for it. This is the last set of pictures for this experiment. Results will be up tomorrow and then data will be uploaded to FigShare so keep a look out.

RCW: Day 9

RCW: Day 8

RCW: Day 7