Moving away from pre-packaged laboratory samples, students in quantitative chemistry have joined with Trout Unlimited to analyze local streams.
The idea came from Professors Tom Werner (chemistry) and Peter Tobiessen (biology), both avid fly fishermen and members of Trout Unlimited, a national organization committed to conserving, protecting, and restoring North America's trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds.
As part of their quantitative chemistry labs last spring, students analyzed the levels of cations (positively charged atoms) and anions (negatively charged atoms) in the water — such as calcium, nitrate, chloride, and sodium — as well as relative concentrations of organic matter. The information was turned over to Trout Unlimited, which maintains a profile of streams. The organization uses such analyses to press for improvements, such as shutting down sources of pollution, shoring up eroding banks to keep silt out of the water, or planting trees and shrubs along the stream to provide shade. It also uses the data to rally the Department of Environmental Conservation to stock and restock healthy streams with trout.
Tobiessen says that Trout Unlimited has an important conservation component. “They would like to reestablish trout populations in streams, not necessarily because they like to fish and they want to see trout there, but because trout are indicative of clear water quality,” he explains.
Before working with Trout Unlimited, Werner had already begun to move away from pre-packaged, commercial unknowns in his laboratories. He had his students analyze over-the-counter medication and other household items so that they could see the practical uses of chemistry. “Working with Trout Unlimited seemed to be the next step,” he says. “Not only could we measure real samples, but we could do the analyses for a reason other than to see how students were doing in order to give them a grade.”
Students used ion chromatography as well as high performance liquid chromatography and fluorescence spectroscopy to separate the ion components of each sample and identify them one at a time. In addition, Tobiessen joined the class for a lecture about the biology of the project — to explain where the ions came from and how they reflect the health of a stream. “We wanted to put it into the big picture,” he explains. “We wanted them to understand what it means to have a chloride ion in a stream and where that chloride ion might have come from.”
Looking at the chemical analysis as well as what they had learned about the biology behind that chemistry, the students were able to analyze the relative health of each of the streams they tested. While their findings were fairly predictable, they still enjoyed the process — much more than analyzing a pre-packaged unknown.
“It was very different from other labs that we've done because it is so practical,” says Tania Magoon '01, who studied the level of organic matter in general. And while the students are quick to emphasize that they are always careful in the lab, Magoon's partner, Keiko Ota '00, admits that they were a bit more careful with this lab because their findings would have ramifications beyond just a grade in a class. “It's great to analyze something that exists in the real world, that really affects something,” says Jon Tower '00.
One reason Werner and Tobiessen developed the project was precisely because of the enthusiasm that “real world” applications evoke. “It means a lot to the students to have their data mean something,” Tobiessen says. “It makes a difference that these data are going to go outside of the College and may have some sort of policy impact.” Adds Werner, “What they find affects not only them; it affects fish and people. I think that it gives them another perspective on laboratory work.”