Channeling Martha Stewart

                Martha Stewart, domestic and business goddess, has long been one of my heroes.  The woman is a genius in her ability to use every day items in unexpected ways.  Who else can turn a lollipop into a flower or a trellis into a garden organizer?  Well, maybe someone else could, but Martha does.  One of the realities of science is that you are often channeling your inner Martha Stewart to solve problems in the lab or field.  All good scientists have to be part construction worker, part baker, and part crafter.  All lab scientists know the necessity of following a recipe to run gels or make a nice petri dish full of agar.  Some of my earliest field experiences involved building 6 foot walls for a terrestrial enclosure out of aluminum flashing.  The terrestrial enclosures, which were being built for salamanders, involved making “Z-channels” to combine to pieces of flashing and rivets to secure the Z-channel and walls together—and all of this fabrication was done in mid-state SC in the middle of the summer back when I was apparently a real trooper.  That was about the time I learned about Martha Stewart (who I naively suggested was all about “crafts for elitists”).  Little did I know then that she had the makings of a real scientist.

                Well, you can see where this is going.  I had a Martha Stewart moment this week after reading some reviews on a recently rejected manuscript criticizing the way we collected samples of algae that grow on things (periphyton), which is a food source of many tadpoles.  We typically collect the periphyton from the sides of the ponds, something these reviewers found impossible to believe.  Reviewers’ minds are often limited by their own limitations, sadly; this makes their criticism irritating, because our method works, but I was trying to think of another way to do the sampling to avoid future criticisms by limited minds.  I googled periphyton sampler and, ah good, there were a couple available.  Here’s one:

 A profession periphyton sampler.  Fancy, no?

How much would you expect one of these babies to cost??  They look simple enough, but they cost around $80-120 dollars for each one!!  I need 36, so that wasn’t going to work.  I started brain storming things that float that would hold slides and I was googling away.  Then I remembered something I had it the lab.

A field biologists staple. 

                Yes, pool noodles.  We’ve used these in experiments to float enclosures in the field and there are a few sitting in my lab taking up space.  Once I found myself an Exacto knife from the tool box and bought some slides from Danny in the store room down the hall, I was well on my way. 

Simple and elegant.

                For the price of some slides (and some pool noodles if they’re not laying around your lab or garage), you can have some lovely periphyton samplers.  I was as proud as Martha Stewart must have been when she realized simple glass jars were much prettier for dish soap, so I posted a picture of them on my facebook page.  Of course, I was looking for some praise.  My grad advisor saw them and left this message:  Sun may not get to the slides.  To which I replied:  Don’t rain on my parade.  Well, he could have a point, but I’m already trying them out.  Fortunately, the sun and the samplers both move and will give the relative differences between our experimental treatments so we’ll give it a try.  The only thing that could go wrong are the slides all sliding out (or the wind turbine by my ponds  falling on my ponds and crushing my experiment).  In the meantime, I’m counting this as one of my own collection of Good Things from the lab.  (I wonder if this will get me on a special edition of her show:  Science Crafts?)

The sampler at work.  Time will tell if I am a genius...or not.