Algae blooms, basement iron analysis, and lots of drumming

Aliyan's Newsletter - November 2024

Hi! Welcome to my November newsletter! If you’re a returning reader, welcome back. If you’re new to my newsletter, I’m Aliyan, a 17-year-old from the newly snowy city of Ottawa, Canada. I'm passionate about climate change, emerging technologies, and building projects like writing research papers on carbon capture and growing algae in my basement! What you’ll find here is a chronicle of cool things I’ve done this month, lessons I’ve learned, and anything else I find interesting!

This month, I started a new algae project, built an iron analysis process in my basement, and performed in my school’s winter concert!

If you were forwarded this email, you’re a friend or mentor of mine and I wanted to share my journey with you! Subscribe here to receive these updates every month!

Starting a new algae project

Last month, I mentioned how much I missed working on experiments in my basement lab (mostly because of university applications!). Well, this month, I had lots of time to work on my latest algae project: solving algae blooms with modified clay and cement!

Here’s a three-line summary:

1. Algae blooms happen when algae grow excessively on bodies of water and damage the surrounding ecosystem

2. We can pull algae blooms out of water using modified clay, which is essentially an algae magnet

3. Then, that clay can become part of cement, making it carbon-negative and tackling both algae blooms and global warming at once!

If you’re curious how I came up with all of this or just want to learn more, I’ve been publishing videos about this on YouTube every week. Here’s my most recent one:

This project is also a throwback to this time last year! Not only are algae blooms closely related to wastewater treatment, it was around this time last year that I started building my basement lab. Looking back on my old videos and weekly goals, I can see how much I’ve grown in building these experiments.

I’m planning to start testing the clay on actual algae in the next couple of weeks, so I’ll have an update in my next newsletter!

Developing iron analysis in my basement

Algae wasn’t the only thing I worked on this month! Back in July, I joined UltraRice, a non-profit developing nutrient-filled rice for the more than 250 million malnourished people in rural India. The original plan was for me to optimize their nutrient fortification process, which uses ultrasonic vibrations to ‘push’ vitamins and minerals into rice grains.

Unfortunately, even though that sounds simple, it’s a pretty complicated process, and we ended up realizing there was a lot of pre-work to do before we could start tests. A lot of that work involved setting up nutrient analysis processes in my basement, specifically for iron. Fortunately, the iron testing process isn’t actually that difficult and mainly involves some simple chemistry using a compound called potassium thiocyanate.

But it turns out that even simple chemistry can be pretty confusing if you’re doing it in a basement lab. I spent this month repeatedly burning rice grains and Raisin Bran, buying chemicals like hydrochloric acid and ferrous sulphate, and trying and failing over and over to get the orange-red colour that would indicate that I’d successfully pulled out the iron.

And finally, after weeks of hard work, I got what I wanted, a nice light orange vial (see below)! Even though the process had lots of twists and turns, I learned a lot along the way, and I’m excited to finally start testing with actual rice!

Performing at my school’s winter concert

Last week, my school held it’s first of several school concerts and while it technically happened in December, all of our preparation and practicing happened through November, so I think it’s fair game for this newsletter!

I had a blast playing 8 pieces across 3 bands and at least 4 different musical genres. 6 of these ended up being on drum set and it was really gratifying to see how much I’ve improved since I started in band more than 2 years ago! Here’s a clip of our percussion ensemble playing Glitzville:

Coming up next month

I’ve got lots planned for the next month! With two weeks off school for the holidays, I’ll have plenty of time to work on both projects I talked about earlier. I’ll also be working on some more university applications before the pile of US university deadlines in the first week of January and interviewing for admission to Oxford University. I’ll also be keeping up my focus on music as I learn my drum and percussion parts for my school’s musical. I’ll have plenty of updates on all this in my next newsletter!

But that’s all for now, so thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this and want to keep up with what I’m doing, subscribe below to receive these newsletters every month.