hey everyone it's ariel waldman from tested i'm really excited to share with you all today what's
in my bag specifically what's in my bag when i go out exploring when i go on scientific expeditions
or when i'm just kind of exploring around in my own neighborhood i have all sorts of things that
i carry along with me that i've learned about over the years that are really helpful and a lot of my
work is really about investigating invisible life and i've been to antarctica and done an
expedition there looking at different microbes like tardigrades and rotifers and nematodes
inside of glaciers around frozen lakes underneath the sea ice all sorts of areas but i also do a
lot of fun expeditions locally so i go on you know some fun trips just here in california
going to parks and gardens and sampling some of the soil to look at the microbes that live
in all these different locations the thing that i love personally is the fact that you can find
tardigrades in sidewalk cracks and parks in antarctica i've actually done a video here
on tested for how you can find harder grades in your own backyard going from how you actually
get tardigrades to how you see them under the microscope so i'm going to focus today a little
bit more on actually what's in my bag so how do you go get those tardigrades how do you go sample
all these cool little microscopic creatures when you're out and about whether it be far away or
closer to home i'm just kind of talking about gear and what to wear so i'm kind of unusual in that
there's plenty of times where i'm out exploring you know uh an ocean or out exploring a park and
i'm wearing a dress i'm wearing whatever i want to wear you know i you know be safe but
sometimes you can just get away with wearing what you wear every day when you go do things just you
know have a good idea of if you want your clothes messed up or not but the gear that i have found
super useful to have in different situations are things like a hard hat and this isn't necessarily
actually because you need a hard hat because you're going to be deep inside some cave and
something might fall on your head certainly wear a hard hat in that situation but it's actually
because when you're out and collecting soil or collecting you know pieces of algae or what have
you from different locations sometimes people want to bother you or they want to sort of be unsure
about what you're doing and it's weird but a hard hat or a really brightly colored vest is a way of
communicating like hey i'm doing some science you know uh don't ask me weird questions you know i'm
i'm here on official business it's not meant to dupe anyone it's kind of just a way of being able
to say like i'm here to get some samples get out because sometimes you're just in locations where
there's a lot of people and typically if you look a little bit more official people will leave you
alone a little bit more and i've actually found that to be kind of useful the other gear to wear
which will make you look like a dork but is super helpful is something like a fanny pack with lots
of pockets and this is because you're going to be sampling dirt or you're going to be sampling water
you're constantly needing to switch out different tools and maybe even switch out
your cameras getting access to different things easily on your waist is actually really useful
as a woman who wears a lot of dresses a lot of my dresses don't have pockets or don't
have enough pockets so i will wear a really dorky sort of fanny pack with all sorts of pockets in it
and it means that i can actually you know access all of my gear while i'm out sampling things
so the other stuff that i really like in my bag is all about sampling so i mentioned sampling dirt
sampling water so you know some of the gear that i use is pretty basic you don't need a whole lot of
it but you know getting now jean bottles plastic bottles or even glassware from your own home
to sample dirt and water with is actually really great the really important thing
about all of these sorts of jars that you might use is that they have screw tops
there's a lot of jars and things out there that seem like they've got a firm grip or even
um some ziploc wear where it sort of just gets onto the top and you clamp it down that's usually
not good enough you want something that has a screw top so that means that it won't spill
you don't want all sorts of like weird little microbes spilling all over your car or all
over your gear it's not fun so always have jars with really good screw tops the other sampling
gear that i really enjoy using is these these are whirl packs these are what scientists use
to sample dry materials so you've got jars for wet samples mud all sorts of stuff whirl packs
are these plastic bags that have a metal enclosure at the top and so you put it in rocks you put in
leaves you put in any dry materials into them and then you can just sort of tie them at the top with
a metal closure and it means that they stay safe it's what scientists really enjoy using because
you can also get sterile ones and they're just really useful for me so other sampling materials
i've got here that i really enjoy are things that look like they should be for cosplay but these are
different kinds of sampling tools this one's like a sword like one you can get this from scientific
lab supplies they're not that expensive um yes you do have to go to a specialty sort of supplier like
thomas scientific or something to get them but why i love them is because not only do they look like
a sword but they're really great for sampling uh dirt so the fact that it's pointy means that you
can dig into the dirt and the fact that it's got this long elongated um sort of cupping feature for
lacquer barrel where it means that you can sample a lot of dirt dig into the dirt sample a lot of it
and then put it into a jar so these actually have come in handy quite a bit other things
in similar nature that i use are um things like uh this scoop that you can use um it means uh you can
take much larger samples for it i like using metal ones uh it just means they're easier to clean
and then also this which is sort of a combination spoon spatula so on one side of it you've got a
flat spatula it means that you can dig into things really easily scrape things off and
on this end you've got a spoon so easy to scoop things up beyond that um one thing that's also
important to remember to bring with you are gloves um because sometimes you're sampling things and
you don't want a bunch of microbes getting into your nose and mouth and god knows what
the microbes i sample usually are pretty benign you're not going to die from them but it's usually
good to wear gloves just to be safe and keep yourself protected while you're handling all
sorts of materials where you just don't know what's in the mud in the water or any of that
it's also good to bring paper towels and a sharpie a lot of times you're wanting to label these uh
jars and they're getting wet they're getting muddled with them they're just not a whole lot
of fun so a lot of times i've forgotten to bring paper towels and then i'm trying to sharpie on
them and it's not sticking because the whole jar is wet so always bring paper towels as well beyond
that um i've got some miscellaneous items here as well so uh i always take gaffer tape with me
um this is actually something i uh learned from the crew at tested norm chan himself uh told me
about gaffer tape years ago when we went and did a rocket launch video and i hadn't used it before
and this is like the best tape if you're going anywhere it means you know you can fix things you
can um tape things up if one of your jars cracks you can use it you can use it for labeling all
sorts of things it's just my go-to everything tape and now i bring it with me on every expedition
so this has come with me to antarctica it's come with me on a deep sea expedition
and when i've road tripped this is always with me and i am always so thankful to have it because
you never can always anticipate exactly what you need it for other miscellaneous items i've
got here this one's there's a big one this one is like a five foot long grabber tool
i can't even reach the handle on so you can't even see it in one frame but this uh grabber tool
allows me to actually grab onto jars and use this to sample uh bodies of water and things
from far away and this is actually really key because i was recently doing a local expedition
looking for salt-loving bacteria so kind of extremophiles that live in really salty water
that nothing else can live in and there was all these salt uh salt ponds around and i was sampling
and i actually had a grabber tool and i had left it behind by accident and i was sampling uh into
some of these salt ponds with just my hand thinking oh well i can get close enough and
sample you know this weird salt water and look at this bacteria and on top of these salt ponds is
like a really crispy layer of salt but underneath it's all mud all the way down and so i was getting
close to this salt pond sampling it with my hand and i fell in past the crispy bit in the salt
and fell in into the mud and it was like an instant quicksand sort of situation like my
i got covered almost uh up to my knees i think in mud and i needed help getting out it was not good
and i felt like an idiot for not having this grammar tool with me that i normally do so not
only do i have a grabber tool but i actually after that incident decided to get a five foot long
grabber tool so it's really big it has this handle and it means that i can grab onto my jars
and sample something from five feet away without actually having to get into a quicksand situation
really important other items i've got here this is really silly this is a this is a plankton net
that's shaped like a shark or a fish or something i got this off of amazon it's a kid's plankton net
but you don't need a really fancy plankton net you can get a kids plankton net um it essentially
means that it filters out all the water and all the little microbes in the ocean come into this
jar here and so i use this um and i go out onto a pier or someplace where i can be really high up
and actually just drop the plankton nut into the ocean swish it around a bit and then i get
a bunch of cool plankton into this little jar so what i've attached to this plankton net is a long
thing of rope um of waterproof rope uh so that i can throw it off of piers don't have
to worry about it so that's kind of like all the miscellaneous stuff that i have here the final
thing i want to talk about that i usually have in my bag is this this is a bento box and i love
bento boxes for actually having kind of a really small compact um i guess box of materials that
i can just go with so if i don't want to take a whole bag with me and i just want something really
mobile i'll pack a bunch of stuff into a bento box and these bento boxes specifically are really
great um these ones i got a taki nak takanaka i apologize if i'm mispronouncing these are really
great because they're hard sided and they're just really useful so what's inside my bento box is
kind of my most basic materials of what i need to sample something and then instantly put it
under a microscope out in the field so for me that means i've got a little pipettes which are really
useful for just sampling really basic water i've got a tiny petri dish for putting under a tiny
microscope another petri dish i've got some kimwipes which are kind of like paper towels
scientific paper towels are a way of thinking of them and then beyond that i've got a box of slides
i've got tweezers for picking up tiny items uh with you know that might be moss or pieces of dirt
i've got a little aspirator here for blowing dirt off with um so yeah box of slides box of
cover glass tiny little flashlight first thing with and then uh what i've got for
helping with uh sealing the slides if i'm looking at things under a microscope quickly in the field
and i don't want the slide to move around and i don't want to mess up my microscope is the tiniest
vaseline which you can use to seal your cover slip to your slide while not totally suffocating
your creatures and giving them enough room to move but if you're looking at something where
you're not worried about suffocating them you can use clear nail polish to attach your coverslip to
your microscope slide so this is kind of my in the field bento box that i use but i also fill bento
boxes with just sampling materials and spatulas and things that i showed earlier just to have as
an easy go-to box in my car or when i'm traveling so these are some of my favorite things that i
love using out in the field whether i be going out in antarctica or somewhere in california local to
me there's all sorts of cool stuff that i find in fact you can find a lot of the cool things that i
look at and all the creatures i look at using all these materials on my own youtube channel we'll
put links in the youtube description for that that you can definitely check out also as always if you
want to pick up a microscope and you're wanting to geek out with other people about microscopes i
belong to the san francisco microscopical society really great community of people to connect with
and give you tips and and hints on how to do this sort of stuff on your own we have people who love
plankton we have people who love tardigrades all different things for all different types of people
so that's what i've got today thank you all so much for watching and i'll see you all next time