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Shelly Wu, Week 7-8

The last two weeks of EXP went by quickly. I planned to stay at Penn until July 31st, but since Dr. Plante gave me a new section in my project about two weeks ago I decided to stay until August 3rd to make sure I can finish everything I needed to work on.

I spent the last two weeks of my EXP experience finishing up the alkali extractions and doing data analysis. With the TOC concentrations I got from the two different extraction methods, I was able to calculate the mass of carbon extracted out of one gram of soil. Then I compared these results with the total organic carbon data Dr. Plante keeps in his lab and was able to calculate the percentage of carbon extracted. I did not finish further steps of data analysis when I left the lab, but I will be working on these data and discussing with Dr. Plante through email next week.


My EXP experience overall has been wonderful. I learned much about research. I met some awesome people. I learned some life lessons both from living alone and working in the lab. I am grateful for having this experience of working in the Plante lab and spending my two months of summer at Penn.
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