A Day in the Life of an Isotope Geochemist

My PhD thesis research at UCSC involves a hefty amount of method development because I am the 1st graduate student ever at UCSC to attempt to gather lithium (Li) and magnesium (Mg) data here. All of my work is done in a trace-metal clean lab, requires triple-distilled trace-metal clean acids, and odd working hours.

However, despite this level of detail, my family chronically asks me

"So... what exactly does your day look like? What is it that you 'do'...?"

To make it easier on them, I thought I'd video snippits of my day, splice them all together, and call it "A Day in the Life of an Isotope Geochemist."

While these columns may be for Li and Mg, a similar method exists for the separation of barium (Ba) from samples, so this work is similar to what I'll be doing as a part of my IRES project.

The synopsis: 8am liquid nitrogen de-gassing in the hallway, shoe removal (this will happen a million more times during the day!), lab safety equipment donning, pipetting acids, checking the acid stills, going to the Ocean Sciences seminar, lunch, dog walking, a much needed beer from a new microbrewery in town, returning to the lab to continue the column chemistry, and the day ends with a spooky walk through the campus redwoods to get home to work on the following day's science outreach talk. Phew! #adayinthelife #science

For more videos like this one, please follow me on Instagram @TheKauaiKemist