Day 4

Today we started the day by continuing our DNA botany lab from Monday. We performed a gel electrophoresis on the plant DNA, and while that ran, we constructed a morphological phylogeny tree.

When our tree was completed, it was time to look at our electrophoresis.

After lunch, we went to the entomology lab, where we revived dead flies for science.

After dinner we had our third activity. We continued our chemistry lab from Monday, by looking at our crystals that we grew.

Day three

 Today was more of a lecture day, and was really one of our favorite days so far. 

To start with this morning we were in the cancer genetics research complex. There a doctoral candidate gave a short lecture on her research project. This entailed why bats are 'chained' to certain islands and why they don't migrate the short distance to another island. 

After her we had a grad student who was well qualified, give an interesting lecture on forensic sciences where we learned how unrealistic CSI really is and how there are so many job titles in forensics

From here we went to lunch 

After we got back we went over to Rhine's hall and talked to both a material engineer and a jocular engineer, who is going to start teaching soon.  To end our day we loaded up and went to Santa Fe College to see their planetarium 

Day two

Today we started out with a student-lead medical lab, where we got to interact with real cadaver parts and learn about the circulatory system and blood pressure, among other things. The leaders would not let us take pictures of the cadaver parts. 

Next we split off into small groups and toured different medical research facilities, ours was primarily a genetics research lab. 

 

When we got back, it was time for lunch. After lunch, a plant biologist came in and worked with us. We learned how to us micro-pipettes through a small activity beforehand. 

Then, we were given different plants, and asked to identify their pollinators.

Once that was completed, we extracted DNA from each of the 4 specimens, for use in a later lab.

The next activity we started was building protein crystals. We started this process yesterday, and will complete it in a later lab as well.

After that was all done, we got to actually have some fun, hanging out in the pool table room getting to know our fellow scholars.

Day one - scavenger hunt

Today we onto to campus around two, from there we got moved into our rooms and then started our general orientation, setting up our blog accounts, took our pretest and listened to a few speakers talking about what we will do when we are here. Then we we ton our scavenger hunt/ tour of the campus 

Our tour started with us going to the Norman tunnel

From there we went to see the architecture building seeing their Benches

This is the turlington potato 

The stadium 

We ended our trip at the Green Pond