SXR270 Tutor - Day 3

Day 3 starts - and I choose the scrambled egg - not very memorable.

Then off to the lab. On the way we have to wander into a copse of trees to grab a sample of lime leaves - some shaded, some in bright sunlight. It's one of the rituals apparently. It's also one of the experiments the students will be doing later.

Getting to the lab, its the leaf disc experiment, and it all goes pretty well - if you exclude the results. They have to subject leaf discs of various plants to radioactive carbon-14 to see how much is taken up by different surfaces and colours of plants.

About 5 different plants were tested including the huge maize plant.

Note the cameo role of the air conditioner next to it - which probably isn't doing it a great deal of good. There is a lot of radioactive marker tape around, and we have to take extra precautions. Special lab coats so as not to spread contamination, gloves and goggles, and a special fume cupboard with lots of admin sheets to account for all the radioactive material.

Most of the results were the exact opposite of what they should have been, oh well - that's science - something I had to say more than once today.

The afternoon brings the presentation skills, and the students have an hour and a half to put together presentations to present to the rest of the group. Then its off to a very large lecture theatre where they get to present them to the group (only 18 people). All very successful. Then a tutor debrief as we prepared to hand over to the next theme.

Then back for tea (pork and various veg, bread and butter pudding).
Then to be with my group as they get introduced to the next theme, and to help out with the poster design workshop.

Then, I think I see the bar in my near future! Oh karaoke.... hum. Its OK - but you can't hear people talk or hold a conversation. Just the one tonight then.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 2

The first full day in the lab. In truth I'd forgotten a lot of the first experiment, but it all came flooding back once it had been demo'd. Managed to remember most of the details, and by listening carefully to the theme tutor I picked up some useful details to pass on. I felt quite confident at points, then I was put in charge of the cronky old 1970's era centrifuge, and it took a while to get that to go. However it all came out ok, the students got their chloroplast suspensions, and were able to proceed with the experiment.

I got lost finding the coffee bar first time, and nearly led a large group of students to the wrong exit to the cafe. However we got there in the end, a good Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. and I'm up two mars bars on the day!

This afternoon both tutor groups combined to do one bigger experiment on stomatal openings. It went pretty well to, although the actual results were pretty marginal.

Then back for tea (chickeny thing in mushroom sauce & apple pie) after picking up the materials I'll need for tonight's talk.  Then I got talked into a quiz - actually it didn't take much talking. And then after we didn't win, we went back to the bar just in time for last orders, and sat drinking in the garden until late.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 1

First day as an SXR 270 tutor. Well, no ones run off screaming yet anyway!

So - what was my day like? Well 12:00 a briefing on the course with the other tutors, and a chance to meet all the team.  I knew at least a couple of the other tutors, so that was good. No real surprises at the meeting.

Then off to the labs to go through the equipment - that was OK too. Most of it came back to me eventually. Some of it more quickly than others.

Then off to hear the course directors introduction talk, followed by taking the group up to the lab for introductions. We split the group into two, and I had my 10 students. I then had to do some ice breaking, and a quick talk on keeping a lab book. It all seemed to go OK, although I wasn't sure.

After that its time for tea after the walk back from the medical school - they are building AGAIN! Tea - was a repeat of last Saturdays menu - I turned down the mushroom rice thingy I had last week (risotto I think), and went for the chicken instead.

After that, I had to give a talk on the scientific method and formulating a hypothesis. I seemed to go through the material quite quickly, even though I'd brought along some of my own slides.

Then to the bar - to have some drinks with my group, and a few other friends I knew from previous courses. I decided on an early night at about 10:30 as tiredness is a real possibility, and other nights might not be so easy to sneak away.

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SXR375 - Day 7

The last day :-(
Today no labs - we just have to give presentations. Breakfast - and wonder of wonders - you're allowed 5 items today!!! I only had 4, as I could hardly believe it!

Then we had an hour to tinker with our presentations. Ours was all finished, but I did have one addition. The only person who had published a paper on our plant, I'd sent an email to the previous day, asking him what pigments he'd found. He lives in New Zealand, but even so I thought it worth a shot. He replied in time for me to include his answer in the presentation. So I quickly inserted a slide in to show his thoughts on it. He hadn't found specific pigments, so we were one better than him. Of course he'd found other details that we referenced, so it was a good trade.

Anyway - then me being the computer geek, I took over the lecture theatre computer and got every ones presentations loaded up, in order and ready to go. I also had my handy dandy laser pointer which everyone used for advancing the slides and pointing things out.

The presentations went very well, and we finished in just over two hours. No one really had a problem, despite most people being full of nerves, and it was a really good session.

Then we had a quick last talk in the lab about the ECA and what was required, then back for our last lunch (fish and chips).
Then it was a few good byes and the whole thing was over. Slowly real life starts to fade back in. I went back to my room, because I'm in the same place next week - being a tutor on a different course. I made a start on the ECA (well just the headings - so a good 15 words from the 2500 required!) - hey its a start.
Then - pickup time for a nights sleep in a proper bed, then a similar thing to do next week!

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SXR375 - Day 6

Last day in the labs today. Breakfast first - the usual mix.

Then down to the labs, to complete our last few bits and pieces. We had a go at the full pigment spectroscopy, but with mixed results. We tried a couple of times, really grinding the leaves up hard with abrasive sand, but it always came out as a green colour and the spectroscopy showed a classic chlorophyll curve.

The the tutor gave us another idea, to mix in acid to try and release the attached molecules, and suddenly we got our nearly flat black spectrum that we wanted - hooray! 

Now we had the full story. So we finished off and went up to start work on the presentation.

We broke for lunch with about half of it done (sweet and sour chicken).

Back down to the lab for a quick briefing on what happens next, and we then worked some more on our presentation. Soon had it finished and then we went to try it in the big lecture theatre. 

A few more tweaks, then printed out the slides and went back to write some notes for the talk around the slides.

Tea coming up (lasagne and lemon meringue with ice cream - no soup), then - to disco or not to disco - that is the question?

Well in the end, we sat in the bar, drank and laughed a lot about presentation skills. It was a release I think from the weeks work.

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SXR375 - Day 5

Day five - project start day. We get to do our own thing a bit more now.
Breakfast, and at last the mushrooms make an appearance.

Then down to the lab - and to decide on the project. Our team of three want to investigate the black leaved flowers and see what they contain. We started off with an ambitious three pronged attack, wanting to measure photosynthetic activity of green v. black leaves, the pigments in the black leaves, and whether the flowers had any insect attractants. After a few false starts with the oxygen electrode we decided to leave that bit. It looks a bit fiddly, and our initial tests were a bit difficult to understand.

We go and fetch some fresh leaves and flowers and set to work. We do chlorophyll extraction first, to see if there are extra pigments there. However nothing unusual shows up.

Then we set to work extracting the other pigments. Anthrocyanins and flavinoids.

The pinky one is from the flowers, and the darker red from the leaves. We leave them evaporating and go and get some lunch (chicken fajitas - pretty good i have to say).

The afternoon brings mixed results. We get very poor TLC plates for the pigments - although the flavones come through. We rerun them a number of time but a smear is the best you could describe them as.
We attempt to use the UV spectrophotometer, but it appears to be a cranky old beast and ignores our best attempts. Then we notice that the visible light spectrophotometers dip into the UV a bit, and they are far easier to use in comparison. So we do a few runs of that, and get something we can talk about I think.
In the end - it looks like we have the data to talk a story, but there is one more thing that would help, and I ask Andy about full spectrum of the pigments.
He told us how it can be done, so that's one more thing for tomorrow.
Tea time (mushroom soup - good,  beef steak - ermmm passs, chocolate sponge - not the best ever). Then another two tutorials. One on our upcoming presentation to the group, and then another on our final piece of written work, and where the marks will be.

We were all a little tired now, and trudged back up the hill. The bar called, and most of us answered.

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