day: 6

the first saturday. slept in til 10 am, showered, ate banana bread, an apple, and orange juice for breakfast. YUMM-O! then studied tree identification until around 3 pm, when one of the girls and i went on a nature walk! we saw lots of snow and had fun trying to identify the trees we saw! there's something so strange about itasca--as cool as it is: actually SEEING the wildlife is an extremely rare occurrence. i see more deer at home, and MANY more birds. i've only seen (maybe) 5 birds the entire time i've been here. the only indicators of life in this park: poop and tracks. our professor found wolf poop outside his cabin! he put it in the lab freezer. he also found a dead grouse...he put that in his cabin freezer (UGH, SICK! GROSS! things that DON'T belong in a home freezer!). anyway, then we came back and had pizza with the girls and one of the guys--the other guys took a day trip farther north to go ice fishing (one of the guys has a car and another guy has a relative whose house they are taking over for the night). then i studied some more, worked on the zooplankton research proposal (i'm still stuck on how to preserve the zooplankton. i can't use a formalin/glucose solution because apparently formalin is a carcinogen...hmm...), watched 'snow white' while i studied tree identifications, read the three letters i got (thanks mom! thanks chrispy! thanks michael!), drank some water, and organized my stuff. tomorrow we're hiking to bohall lake (not everyone has skis, so i'll probably wear snowshoes)--it's about 4 miles there, 4 miles back. so...intense. apparently it's gorgeous, though! yup. that's it. sleep time! ps: thanks for posting a comment, mom and dad! AND gramma! i hope scrabble slam was awesome! OH! and thanks to mandi and mrs. easterling, too :) love you!!

days: 4 & 5

sorry about missing a blog'post! YESTERDAY: i woke up and went to class. we learned about how trees prep for winter--there are 3 stages. stage 1 (tolerated -5 to -10 celcius) is when the tree stops growing and the lipids in the cells change to become more unsaturated (which means they become more flexible at lower temperatures). stage 2 (tolerated -20 to -30 celcius) is triggered by the 1st frost. the cells become dehydrated and solute concentrations (C6H12O6, glycerol, proteins) in the cells increase. solute concentration increases are important because then the water in the cell freezes at a lower temperature (less water, lower freezing temp; more water, higher freezing temp). stage 3 (triggered at -30 to -50 celcius and tolerated down to -80 celcius) is when the tree vitrificates--the glycerols pretty much turn to glass. not all trees can do this, for obvious reasons...but, mostly because if ice penetrates like this, the cells become dehydrated and the proteins denature. fun fact: the worst day for a conifer is a sunny, calm day. why? because there is a high H2O loss--transpiration is high because there is higher radiation on the leaves as the hydrogen bonds between water molecules break. after we learned about trees, we went to the lab and began to identify twigs. the twig quiz is the 19th--60% outside/field identification; 40% inside identification. after that, i did some research on my zooplankton project! lots and lots of good papers. i'm still working on a plan, and then i'll talk to my group about my idea. then we had dinner--the guys made of spaghetti! it was delicious. i love noodles. and bread. and then for dessert some of us had ice cream with chocolate syrup and some had bananas foster. i had ice cream; the bananas foster tasted too much like rum (gross). then we played some games and another girl and i came back to our cabin around 9 pm and chillaxed. TODAY: woke up, went to class at 9. we started out with an experiment. snowflakes form with supercooled water that has been frozen. so, what we did was put distilled water in test tubes and sit outside until they got to -8 celcius'ish. when they got around that point, the water either flash froze right there in the tube or we "tickled" it (imitating a nucleation point...like a piece of dust) with a pine needle or another snowflake and it froze! ten we went inside and talked about how with lakes, once the water reaches a certain uniform temperature, the freezing is instantaneous! then we talked about how with salt water there is no salt in the ice itself, and because of that the salt content of the water underneath the ice increases. that super dense ocean water is then dumped into the atlantic via currents...and boom: super duper salty winter stuff. key point: if you're thirsty and you're in the arctic, eat ice. or, melt it in a house or something. then we learned about types of lakes, stratification and how layers are key indicators of the harshness of previous winters, the type of freezing that will occur in the future, etc. OH! the bottom of a lake is usually 4 celcius. there are also 2 types of ice: black and white. the types of ice are determined by the light transmittance. black ice has the most light transmittance because it is invisible to solar light; white ice is a linear-downward slope; white ice is white because it is frozen-saturated-snow--the snow is hit with moisture, the air bubbles freeze...KABOOM! white ice. ps: ice is a really bad insulator. snow is a really good insulator. after class today, i studied twigs some more, did some more zooplankton research, and talked to the professor about adding another research project to my repertoire because i want to learn lots and lots (looks like that one is going to be analyzing the temperature difference between the outside and inside of trees via temperature probes in the bark--ultimately, seeing which stage of "winterization" some trees are in...and whether or not they will survive to the spring with the brutal temperatures we've been having!)...and then i ate lunch (teriyaki rice, peas, pineapple, bread, milk) and we all went on a nature hike and practiced identifying trees in the field! it was soooooo pretty! i love nature. yup. tonight the guys are making: pork loin (...), mashed potatoes (i donated mine), veggies, and...apparently some sort of chocolate torte? guys are so ambitious. then they're all going to have "fun" late into the night...and i'm going to watch a movie, make banana bread, and study twig names with the other girl who isn't much into that sort of..."fun." i mailed letters today, too! i'll write more. i daresay i have time. anywho, LOVE! ps: mommy, in your next letter to me (thanks for the one yesterday, too!!) can you send me some more stamps??

day: 3

woke up, ate corn pops (i accidentally poured orange juice in the first bowl, so i had to get another bowl...oopsie), and went to class at 9. i've also given up on my bangs--officially, they are the victim of bobby pins. it's nice to be able to see clearly now (cue: song by johnny nash). today in class we talked snow and how snowflakes form! here's their creation story: "once upon a time, there was a mass of warm, moist air. it was lonely, floating up in the big blue sky with no one to talk to, so it decided to collide with a cool, dry mass of air (get it? it collided with something "cool" so now it's "cool"?! ok. bad joke.). anyway, the combined masses cooled as they rose into the strato/troposphere. after cooling sufficiently, they were attacked by a mass of supercooled air that caused the clouds in the warm-cool mass to condense into water droplets! now, these water droplets weren't satisfied with simply being hydrogen bonded to each other--they wanted to move up in the world and become snowflakes, and associate with stuff on the ground! each water droplet then went on a mad search for (star)dust particles to use as a sort of 'nucleus', or foundation for crystal formation. all of the sudden, around -6 degrees celcius, they decided...to eat a norwegian bubble chocolate (i totally just had one--it was really delicious!). after devouring the chocolate, the droplet froze with sixfold-hexagonal symmetry around the (star)dust particle. the vapor around the frozen droplet then began to develop into beautiful patterns using faceting (condenses the flake edge into a plate) and branching (diffuses the vapor at the edge to make intricate point patterns)! because the super-cooled mass had different humidity levels--low and high--each snowflake formed at a different pace. the droplets in low humidity grew slowly and had simple prisms, and the droplets in high humidity grew the fastest and had complex prisms. after each snowflake thought itself to be adequately beautiful, they all floated down from the sky in a beautiful blizzard, shrouding earth and the island of misfit toys (shout-out to haley'bug! yay clay'mation rudolph!) in its glittery beauty, providing for pristine-looking landscapes and insulation (low thermal conductivity) for small and large animals--like, ermines and unicorns. the end." yup. so, that's the story of snowflakes. moving on. after learning about the properties of snow, etc., we did something with thermometers (i'm not really sure what...), ate lunch, and went skiing to the headwaters of the mississippi! we took the trail TO the headwaters (it was cool...small...like a 15 ft. spilling of water over a small 2 ft. high bump of ice. what it represents is what makes it super special awesome)...but, on the way BACK...we skiied across lake itasca. we followed a snowmobile track out to a little hut (about 100 ft. from shore) and then hit...SLUSH! SCARY! we all kind of panicked, but then barreled through some untouched snow (prodding it ahead of our skis with our poles to make sure it was ok) and approx. 2 miles later, after blazing our own trail, arrived back at the lab. EXHAUSTION. then, chilled for a while/drank some water before heading to class at 2 pm to do some work with measuring snow density. before dinner we played risk and then had 11 pizzas for dinner. then we played uno and mafia a couple of times, and then a couple of us read while the others finished risk/watched pokemon. tomorrow is supposed to be really windy and cold, so we're going to be inside learning about what animals do in the winter and tree identification with twig samples. for now, ciao! ps: thanks for commenting!! :)

day: 2

woke up, ate corn pops, went to class at 9 am. we talked about the history of itasca! the name itasca originates from the latin: verITAS CAput, which means "true head," in reference to the headwaters of the mississippi. the park is 32,000 acres, and is located at the edge of a coniferous, boreal, and deciduous forest--the park itself has been pwned by oaks. oh, fun fact: there's also a bison kill site which indicates that 8,000 years ago, there were in fact people inhabiting the area. AND in 1922, there was a wave of intense forest fires that burned all of the organic matter/"slash" residue left after logging (when the organic matter is burned, it is very challenging for the environment to recover--think of it as the ground trying to create another "biotic juice" to grow life...except there's no foundation to make juicy life...make sense?). the park was glaciated til 10,000-11,000 years ago by the wadena lobe (the des moines lobe covered northfield). park rapids was the "delta" of the glacier and the hills around itasca/minnesota/any glacial underground is due to the till (mass of silt, dirt, sand) dropping off of a giant ice cube and the ice cube melting and leaving a giant hole in the ground. enough about itasca. we then went over the reading about black carbon/albedo/dust. asia has the highest industrial emissions (surprise, surprise). there's other stuff about black carbon, but i don't want to write about it. anyway, we went on to do an experiment to measure albedo on the top 2 cm of snow on the lake ice! we walked on water! yaaaaaay! and sometimes the ice made a booming sound, like thunder! except, it didn't really crack. well, maybe it did. i don't really know. i don't have x-ray vision, so it's impossible to see underneath the snow. it wouldn't matter if it did in the area we were because it would freeze shut instantly (that's what prof. told us, at least...). the process of our experiment: 1) make 26 1 m x 1 m plots in the snow (we used my compass to make sure the lines were straight!); 2) sift black carbon and dust over the plots--in varying amounts on plots 1-4; 3) scoop the affected snow into a baggie with a 2 cm (1/2 beaker); 4) while in the baggies, melt the snow; 5) tare the scale and measure the mass of each sample; 6) use deionized water to clean out the rest of the carbon or dust, if needed, and then put the water through a vacuum-pump-filter-thingy; 6) after letting the filter papers dry, put in the spectrophotometer and measure the turbidity of the filtered-solution with imitated solar radiation waves. it sounds more exciting than it actually was...but, it was still SUPER cool! :) then we ate 7 boxes of kraft mac&cheese, 3 bags of frozen veggies, 3 cans of chunked pineapple, 30 tennis-ball/golf-ball diameter chocolate chip cookies, and water. i just finished my reading about snow/snowflake and frost formation...and will probably be asleep by 11. class at 9 tomorrow--studying snowflakes as they are falling and snowpack characteristics. i think after class we're also going to ski up to the headwaters! and then tomorrow night i'll work on my zooplankton project (yesssss!). ciao4now <3

day: 1

woke up around 8 am after a deliciously wonderful sleep, ate two bowls of corn pops (mm mm good!), chilled in front of the fire, and read the reading for today. THEN i went skiing with a couple of girls! skiing's fun. lots and lots of fun. after we got back (around 1:15 pm), i drank some water and...i think i ate something...hmm, can't remember. anyway, then we went to class at 2 pm. it's awesome: the classroom/lab station is right on the lake, not even a 5-minute walk from our cabin. we talked about the reading, about what winter ecology is, the research we're going to be doing on black carbon dust and albedo (the proportion of the incident light or radiation that is reflected by a surface; more black carbon, less reflection from the snow and more absorption of energy). then my partner and i looked up books to use for our research on zooplankton, did the reading for tomorrow, and made a fantabulous taco dinner! between 11 of us, we ate 3 boxes of uncle ben's mexican fiesta rice, 3 turkey thingies, 2 bags of shredded cheese, 1 large can of refried beans, 5 chopped apples, 3/4 of a gallon of milk, 1/2 tub of large sour cream, 1/2 large jar of salsa, and 3 packs of betty crocker brownies/mix. yup. pretty intense. guys cleaned dishes, and then we figured out meals for the week. then we played mafia (mystery game; duties designated via which card you draw; narrator tells the "who dunnit" story) and presidents (another card game). now i'm going to fall asleep! class is 9-noon/break 1 hour for lunch/black carbon research/mac&cheese for dinner. oh, and before i forget: cell reception is horrible up here; i'm pretty much ignoring my phone except for using it as an alarm in the morning. mom, dad, and cooper'booger: you win the award (world record honor, actually) of sending a letter to a student so quickly. thank you :) i'll send you one...as soon as i figure out...how. haha! alright, sleep sweet, world! ciao4now :)

day: arrival

i'm here! i'm here! i'm here! the cabin is brand new. smells like...i don't know what kind of wood it is, but it smells delicious! the kitchen is fully equipped with frigidaire stainless steel appliances, the bathroom is luxurious, the couch is super duper comfy, and the bed...well, i haven't slept yet, so i don't know (it looks cozy, though!). basically, it's a really nice, 2-story log cabin, except with light-colored wood, not dark-dangerous looking wood, with a back-screened-in-porch...overlooking the frozen lake :) tonight is dinner at professor and his family's house...and then...who knows. two girls have yet to arrive and the other three that are here are napping at the moment. oh, and if there were an ice-storm-hurricane-tornado-flood-blizzard-arctic-dinosaur-invasion, we would be perfectly ok on the food front: sooooo much food. yum. (ps: thanks again, dad, for driving me all the way there! hope it's warmer at home :P and, thanks again, mommy, for organizing all my stuff. i would have no clothes or food had it not been for you (and your outrageously groovy organizing skills). alright, ciao4now!

bemidji

-30 degrees fahrenheit. whoa!