Attachment Day 4: Testing for Organic Carbon in Soil. Personal Practice

Hey guys, today is my fourth day at Savannah agricultural institute(SARI) and the activity for today is spelled in the title. We started by labelling our samples collected and sieved from the field. We used a marker and a lab tape for labelling.

_{Labelling samples collected from field into polythene bags using marker and lab tape}

Then we proceeded to weighing 10g of soil and organic matter into 18 different containers as we have 18 samples.

_{Weighing 10g of soil and organic matter samples}

_{Transferring 10g weighed soil and organic matter samples into containers}

We then added 25ml distilled water into the containers holding the soil and organic matter samples using a 25ml measuring cylinder. We stirred the samples for a uniform mixture and left them to stand for 30minutes.

<sub>Measuring 25ml of distilled water using 25ml measuring cylinder

Adding 25ml distilled water into each of 18 samples of soil and organic matter</sub>

At this point, it was almost time for lunch break. Break is set at 12pm and we had to go lunch break. We washed our hands with distilled water and went into Nyanpkala town to get some food at a Waakye joint.

_{Having lunch at the waakye joint}

After we got back, our lab technician had already calibrated our pH meter and Conductivity meter which we will be using for measuring pH, Conductivity, Salinity and TDS. Today was a personal practice session for us intern students: we were taken through this practical by the lab technician 2 days ago and we were did it ourselves today on different samples.

We were 2 intern students so we divided the work among ourselves. My colleague measured pH while I measured Conductivity, Salinity and TDS.

_{Me measuring conductivity, salinity and TDS using conductivity meter}

_{My colleague measuring pH using pH meter}

Due to the hectic nature of our work today, I won’t be able to present a markdown-created table for the work but will simply use a picture of our recorded values.

_{Our table of results}

I’m sure you probably noticed from our results that samples 4, 17 and 18 had outlying values for some of the paramaters measured. This is because they didn’t have enough water for the pH and conductivity meter to be able to read their solutions so we added extra 25ml to them, hence their outlying or dispersed values values gor Conductivity, Salinity and TDS

And that was a wrap for today. The practical session was lively and fun. When weighing my samples, I actually weighed one particular sample into 3 different containers😂. Every sample is supposed to be in a container though. My colleague drew my attention to this at some point when he observed I wasn’t moving to the spot we placed the samples to pick new samples. Nevertheless, it was fun and we learnt a lot.

Thanks for you time and thank you for reading😊