Splish splash

I had a disappointing day in the lab and am a little upset at myself. I've been using the Ferrozine method to determine dissolved Fe for the last month and today, on the most valuable samples that I need to run, I really messed up. Instead of filling the 50 mL Taylor tubes up with DI Water after adding buffer, I did it before. This meant that I couldn't quantify the final volume, and as a result, the initial Fe concentration in the sample can not be determined. I did end up quantitatively transfering the solutions to 100 mL volumetric flasks, adding buffer and diluting. This meant I had to make a whole new set of standards (7 in all) for the 100 mL volumetric sample set. No problem - just an extra 1.5 hours. In the end I did get the standard curve negotiated and the diluted samples put through the spectrophotometer, but I'm not sure how reliable the results are. The curve is okay (R-sq of 0.9964 - last week it was 0.9999997); I'll just have to wait and see how the standard deviation turns out.

And on top of that, one of those dumb online quizzes labeled me a low-ranking nerd.