On Monday soil samples that were taken on Thursday of the previous week were taken out of the oven and weighed. The next day fresh samples were taken, weighed and put into the oven in order to be heated up. On the same day I talked with another professor to help out in her lab as well. As such that they there wasn’t much work to do but I stayed and helped clean some test tubes that would be needed to be used for the Alcaparra experiment. Along with this I learned about the experiment that she will be working on. The professor is trying to increase the germination counts of store but Alcaparra seeds (only 5% of seeds germinate) by putting the seeds in gibberellic acid (AG3) in order to try and increase the rate of germination.

On Thursday the dried soil samples where taken from the oven and weighed and then the rings where the samples are in were cleaned. The same day I also helped with cutting Alcaparra seeds in half in order to see the amount of oxygen that entered seeds that did not germinate. I also helped weigh seeds that had been put in deionized water in order to see how much water the seeds would take in. The same was done to seeds that been placed in water or AG3. On Friday Eric came and visited Valencia and Eric, my brother and I went and visited different parts of Valencia including the central market, the Cathedral of Valencia, and the museum of the Old market.