For two weeks we’ve been gathering samples of water from 10 soccer fields in San Francisco. Professor Adina says we must get as many as possible, so my mom takes me out each morning and I try to do at least a few fields each day. I store the vials of water in our freezer, and the more I collect, the more frozen vegetables I get to throw out! I enjoy collecting samples, writing in my science journal, and making lists of the samples so we can keep track of where they’re from. Professor Adina says we will meet in her lab at UC Santa Cruz and use a lot of different tests that will tell us what’s in both kinds of fields. I am really interested to find out.

We were lucky to find a grass field that was being watered, which made it easier to collect a sample of runoff water. We spent today going to five different fields. It’s important to bring snacks and sports balls, so I can take breaks and play in between collecting samples. That’s what parks are for! The freezer is filling up with samples now, and I hope we can try some different methods for gathering samples.

We got one grass field sample today and one turf field sample, but both were only about 20 ml. We had hoped to get 40 ml. It was supposed to rain today, but it just drizzled. We’re hoping we will get a good soaking rain tonight so that we can spend tomorrow getting samples. Sample collection is hard work, especially when you’re wet and cold. But I’m excited to learn what the samples will tell us.

The box with a syringe, notebook, gloves and vials arrived today. I also visited a few fields to try to get some samples. It was really hard to get any water from the grass fields.