Written by: Quinn Tamo, SSI Intern
Our Chemistry lab intern, Teran, is a Nevada County native. This fact shows itself through her love of our streams and water systems. She loves to work with water and in the chemistry lab, which is practically all water work, because of our various tests on creeks and streams. She’s shown to be an amazing help in the lab and a very reliable and responsible person along with her friendly attitude with everyone she meets.
Teran found her love for science in high school. Before she left for college, we were lucky to have her intern at SSI. She loves working in the lab, the repetitive and new things she gets to do really feeds her interests while keeping it from getting too convoluted. She has said herself that it takes a very interesting person to work alone in the lab for most days. She gets to do varying tasks that have repetitive steps. She then gets to learn new processes when she gets the hang of the first job.
One of the most interesting things she finds about lab work is working with bacteria. When our chemists take water samples and test for E-coli, it’s fascinating because in the process the e-coli exhibits fluorescence under a UV light.
Her first and main job at the lab is chlorophyll, which is the lab work after the other volunteers and interns had collected algae from our local streams and rivers. The first step of this task is to take the filter full of algae and put it into ethanol where it’s then ground up to sand to let sit for 24 hours, it’s then put into centrifuge and that spins the contents so fast that the mass of algae turns into a little pellet. The ethanol is then poured into a spectrophotometer that measures the amount of chlorophyll in the sample.
The scientific process includes a ton of just waiting around for results and it takes a very patient person to work with things like that. Teran is now working on additional projects, like measuring the Nitrate and Phosphate in water samples.
Out of the lab she sews dresses and experiments with different projects like the quilt she’s working on and the one she’s already finished. She has a very strong creative spirit that engages with others and their own interests.
All and all Teran is a very valuable member of Sierra Streams Institute, she puts her all into her work and keeps a positive attitude in the lab that we will greatly miss when she goes off to college.
