Yesterday we made lots of preparations for the experiments we were going to run. I got the fun task of having to separate chia seeds from the mucilage that they release when they are mixed with water. To do this the chia seeds had to be soaked in water for four hours. Then I poured them into a large syringe. I emptied the syringe against a sieve to separate the seeds from the mucilage. The mucilage is strongly bound to the seeds so I had to apply a lot of force to get the mucilage to go through the sieve. If I didn't press hard enough the seeds and mucilage squirted out of the side of the syringe. One time when this happened I ended up with quite a lot of chia seeds stuck to the wall!
Here is a picture of the syringe and the sieve I was using. Underneath the sieve there is a plastic pot to catch the mucilage.
This is a picture of the chia seed and their mucilage.
Once I had separated the seeds from the mucilage I then had to use a pair of tweezers to pick out all the bits that had managed to pass through the sieve. This was quite difficult. It was like having to pick the solid bits out of a very large bogey!
Sam, who was in charge the experiments, showed us how they should be carried out and we started the first one. This was pretty simple. Put the sample in the scanner, scan it at three different heights and then repeat with the next sample.
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