I thought I'd post today about improvisation. Working in a remote
place often involves some improvisation. There have been many ways
we've improvised on this trip, and here's one. Normally, we like to
dry samples in nice ovens, or better yet in freeze dryers. For samples
that had to be dried here, I "built" this cute little oven. It
consists of a box with a hole cut in the bottom to go over a light.
With the help of a tripod and an extra bed, the box was stable for an
overnight drying session. And as you can see from the lower reading,
it hit my target range of 35-40°C nearly perfectly.
Warning: be careful with heat. I checked the temperature around the
light bulb quite a few times to be sure I wasn't a fire hazard. John
reports that an older tactic was to use a candle as a heat source, and
he caught his plant samples on fire once!
