FTIR focus

     I finished my research proposal (and on time too). We treated plastic 4 with alcohol again and tested for contamination on PIA and TSA. So far, no contamination after 48 hours. I think we're good to go. Today we'll redo the SEM pictures of alcohol treated plastic 4, and we'll take new SEM pictures of all Pseudomonas species for all 7 day intervals of plastic 3! This is potentially really momentous because this will be the first time that we'll be looking not just for proof of colonization but also for actual biodegradation particularly between the day 28 co incubation and the alcohol treated control. I think that number 3 will be a particularly good sample to begin to see degradation because in the last SEM pictures we took it were more porous. That makes it more susceptible to degradation because of increased surface area.
     In addition to that, we've really been cramming this week in preparation for doing FTIR. That is Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. As I'm still figuring out the ins and outs, I won't attempt to explain it, but it's based on the infrared spectrum which is very interesting all in its own. It was discovered by William Herschel in an experiment where he was trying to observe temperature differences in the visible light spectrum. He passed light through a prism to separate it and placed a thermometer in each different color. As a control, he put a thermometer next to red. His control was NOT room temperature.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=2275
Anyway, I just thought that was neat, and I was talking to Maria about it, and she's learning a lot about it for her astronomy class. FTIR works my observing absorption and output of infrared light that is unique to a substances functional groups and can be used to identify substances or even molecular changes in substances. That's what we are most interested in. Any molecular changes that might indicate biodegradation of our microplastics.