Why my experiment is ridiculous

During the last stage of my experiment, I began to realize how ridiculous it is. Really, how ridiculous many of my experiments are.

I was filling my experimental tubs with sand. I had ordered sand from the local quarry, which they had dumped just inside the fence surrounding the greenhouse. I had to move this sand from the pile into the greenhouse into my tubs.

I knew it was a lot of sand, but never really thought about how much it was......I needed about 9 cubic metres, which is about 13 metric tons.....still didn't really think about how much that actually was.....until I converted it into pounds. That's over 30,000 lbs of sand!!! That I moved by hand from a pile outside, into the greenhouse.....And that's why my experiment is ridiculous. I actually had to stop working for a minute when I realized this I was laughing so hard.

As exciting as this task was, it got a little repetitive......so I decided to document it

Here is the pile of sand. It's already 1/3 gone.



First I filled a tub in the wheelbarrow with another smaller tub


Then I pushed the wheelbarrow over to the greenhouse (until it started raining. Then there was too much mud for the wheelbarrow. And I had to carry the small tub over by hand. But that was only for about 2 days....)


Then I would empty from the tub in the wheelbarrow to 4 tubs in the greenhouse (spreading the weight out so I could lift the tubs)


Then I would carry the tub over and empty it into one of my many many experimental tubs. But I could only lift the tubs when they are about 1/4 full, so each tub needed at least 4 seperate fills.


And as you can see, there are A LOT of tubs. So so much sand.

My friend Mike called his thesis "Four years of gardening in the Yukon", and suggested that I should call mine "Four years of killing stuff in the Yukon". It was pretty appropriate until I got here, and then I could have titled it "Four years of killing stuff around the world".

But now, after summers carrying 90 lbs of water a day up my hill in Kluane. And moving this stupidly large amount of sand. I think it should be called "4 years of carrying ridiculously large amounts of stuff from one place to another". What do people think?

Despite how ridiculous it was to set up.....the experiment is up and running!

A few pictures of the final set up.....